


Going Somewhere Else

by mongooseking



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:35:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 25,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23520916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mongooseking/pseuds/mongooseking
Summary: Steven goes on a road trip. But then you knew that part already.
Comments: 60
Kudos: 116





	1. Charm City

The cello case closed with a thud. Steven latched it shut and hoisted it into the back of the van.

“Thanks for helping us pack up, Steven,” said Sadie. She and Shep manhandled their last amp into the spot beside the cello.

“Yeah, it was cool of you,” said Shep, shutting the trunk.

Steven shrugged, smiling. “Hey, it was the least I could do for my new favorite band.” Truthfully, he had seized on the excuse to spend a little more time with them. Sadie and Shep’s tour was limited to a chunk of the East Coast and Steven’s road trip, well, wasn’t. He might not see them again for quite some time, a fact which he had been fine with two hours ago and which was now hanging over his head like some terrible cloud.

“So you liked our show?” asked Sadie.

“Yeah!” said Steven, adding to Shep, “I didn’t know you knew how to play the cello.”

Shep shrugged. “I don’t,” they said. “That’s part of the fun.”

Sadie checked her watch. “We were gonna go to that boba place,” she said. “You wanna come, Steven?”

“Sure!” said Steven. “I love tiny portions of tapioca.”

They all piled into the touring van. Steven offered to drive, but Sadie and Shep shared a look and Shep got behind the wheel instead. With a twist of his gut, Steven remembered that his dad was their manager. He had probably told them about the whole totaling-the-van thing, and now they would never want Steven to drive them anywhere again.

Well. Either that or they just didn’t want to put their fates in the hands of a seventeen-year-old. It was a toss-up, really.

Sadie sat in the back with Steven (“It’s safer here for us short folks,” she had joked, but Steven knew she was just trying to keep him company), and Shep entered the boba place’s address into Boogle Maps, and they were off. Charm City unfolded out Steven’s window. He’d been to the city before, although never this specific part of it, and he had to admit, it was very charming. Admittedly Steven thought earthworms were charming (because they were), but surely even someone less easily impressed than he would think the same of the city.

“So what was your favorite song?” asked Sadie. Steven tore his gaze away from the window to look at her. “We’re always trying out new material.”

Steven thought about this. “I think I liked the third one best,” he said. “You know, Perspective? Is that what it was called?”

Shep laughed from the front seat. “Yeah! Perspective,” they said. “I told you he’d like that one.”

Sadie grinned. “Wow, Steven, getting a little predictable there.”

Steven shrugged. “Force of habit,” he said, winking. “I had to go easy on Garnet, you know.”

Sadie laughed. Shep did too, in that way people do when they’re not sure why what you said was funny but want to support you anyway.

“That song actually has a funny story behind it,” said Shep, turning onto a busy street.

“Oh, don’t remind me,” Sadie groaned.

“Why, what happened?” said Steven, perking up. There was very little in life quite as satisfying as a funny story. In fact, Steven would probably rank funny stories as the fourth most satisfying thing in existence, right behind #1. a cat sitting on your lap, #2. ice cream, and #3. singing a good song.

“It wasn’t that funny,” Sadie said.

“It was a little funny,” said Shep. “See, Steven, your dad and Sadie and I all got into a big argument about cilantro.”

“Huh,” said Steven, mulling it over before delivering his final verdict. “You’re right, that is funny.” He paused, confusion setting in. “But wait. What’s there to argue about?”

“Apparently your dad thinks cilantro is the bee’s knees,” said Sadie. “I think it tastes like soap.”

Steven gasps. “You don’t like cilantro?! But you’re a former culinary industry professional!”

“Sorry, Steven,” said Sadie. “But it tastes like soap.”

“It’s a genetic thing,” said Shep. “Some people can taste what cilantro is actually like, and some people think it tastes like soap.”

“But that’s horrible!” said Steven. “Imagine going through your life never getting to truly experience the taste of cilantro. We should do something about this!”

“Uh, we really don’t need to,” said Sadie. “I’m good. Really.”

“But you’re missing out!” Steven cried.

“So?” said Sadie. “You’ve missed out on having a belly button for seventeen years.”

Steven paused, his anguish over this clear miscarriage of cilantro justice momentarily quelled. “That’s true,” he said.

“People miss out on things,” said Sadie. “Not everyone gets to have every experience. That’s just life.”

Steven sighed. He knew she was right, of course. But as always, the urge to fix bubbled up inside him and made him restless. He was better at saying no to it now, but he couldn’t get rid of it entirely, couldn’t convince himself there was nothing for him to fix. His therapist kept telling him that wasn’t the goal anyway, the goal was to be able to live with the discomfort of things being left unfixed, because that was an inescapable part of life, but that goal seemed so very far away from him now.

“What about you, Shep?” Steven asked, still dissatisfied with Sadie’s very sensible dismissal of his zany not-really-a-plan to somehow get her to experience the true taste of cilantro.

“Oh, I can taste cilantro,” said Shep.

“So you agree Sadie’s missing out,” said Steven triumphantly.

Shep laughed. “You sound like your dad,” they said. “Honestly, I don’t really think she’s missing out on much.”

“Why not?” said Steven. “Don’t you like cilantro?”

Shep shrugged. “Eh,” they said. “It’s okay.”

“Just okay?!”

“Yep,” said Shep.

This baffled Steven far more than Sadie’s belief that it tasted like soap, but he felt that pressing the matter further would probably be rude. “Wait,” he said, remembering something. “You said this was related to the song?”

“Yeah,” said Sadie. “That’s kind of what the song’s about. You know, everyone’s got a different perspective.”

“On cilantro and on life,” Shep intoned from up front.

Steven considered this. “Huh,” he said. “I guess that explains the line about soup garnishes.”

“Your destination is on the right,” Boogle Maps informed them. Shep turned the app off and pulled into a parking space in front of a whimsical-looking storefront whose sign read “Boba Yaga”.

Ten minutes later, they were sitting on a bench in front of the store, sipping on their boba teas (taro for Shep, strawberry for Sadie, classic milk for Steven).

“Hm,” said Shep. “Good boba.”

“It’s a little sweet for me,” said Sadie, eyeing her drink critically.

Steven slurped up a tapioca ball. “Working at a boba place could be fun,” he said thoughtfully. “You could get free boba.”

Sadie looked at him as if he had grown an extra head. He checked to make sure that wasn’t the case, because you never knew. “Steven. Working in customer service is literally the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Steven almost made a snippy retort like _Oh, so your gem never got torn out of your body? How lucky for you_ , but stopped himself in time. Instead he redirected his thoughts toward repeating a mantra inside his head that his therapist had helped him write for himself: _Your pain is valid but so is mine. My pain is valid but so is yours._

Out loud he said, “I never got why you and Lars hated that job so much. I had fun when I did it.”

“That’s because you were like twelve,” said Sadie. “And you only did it for a day.”

“You did customer service work for a day when you were only twelve?” said Shep, sounding impressed. “Wow. Respect.”

“Customer service sucks, Steven,” said Sadie. “Half the time the customers are huge jerks. And you have to be on your feet all day, catering to their every whim and cleaning up all their messes and smiling the entire time like it doesn’t bother you at all.”

_Sounds like being Steven Universe_ , thought Steven, a bit bitterly, and then thought, _oh_. That was why Lars and Sadie had always looked so miserable underneath their smiles, handing out donuts like Steven handing out kindness. It was endless work, the work of always-giving, and in the end all you got was a bite or two, and it was probably stale anyway.

“You’re right,” he said aloud. “That does sound pretty awful.”

They finished their boba without any more talk of Steven working at a boba place, and Shep and Sadie took him back to the concert venue so he could retrieve the Dondai.

“So where are you going next?” Sadie asked, giving him a goodbye hug.

“I’m heading up north on I-95,” said Steven. “Connie’s touring schools on Providence Island, so I’ll meet up with her there after I’ve explored Haven for a bit. I’m already pretty familiar with Keystone and Jersey and Empire so I don’t think I’ll be staying too long in that area.” Those were, in fact, pretty much the only states he was familiar with outside of Delmarva, if you didn’t count the assorted Gem landmarks scattered throughout the country that he’d warped to on occasion.

“Don’t rush through,” Shep cautioned him, giving him a fistbump of farewell. “Just because you’ve been there before doesn’t mean there’s nothing new to see.”

“Well, maybe you can rush through Jersey,” said Sadie.

Steven laughed. “Yeah, probably,” he said. “But I’ll keep an eye out for new things. Perspective, right?”

“Perspective,” said Shep, nodding sagely.

Steven dug into his coat pocket and took out his keys. He twirled them around his finger once before unlocking the Dondai with a flourish.

“We’ll talk, yeah?” he said, trying to act as if this question were merely a standard thing to say and totally irrelevant to his psychological wellbeing.

Sadie smiled in a way that suggested that he was a bad actor. “Sure we will,” she said. “You’ve got both our numbers. And let us know if you ever want to Scope or FaceTalk.”

“Will do,” said Steven, feeling relieved and a bit embarrassed by it. He got into his car and turned it on, then rolled down his window. “See you guys! Good luck on your tour!”

“You’re supposed to tell us to break a leg!” Sadie protested, waving, while Shep laughed.

“I can’t!” said Steven. “It’s too mean!”

“We’ll take good luck,” said Shep. “See you, Steven.”

“Drive safe!” Sadie called out as Steven pulled away.

“Eat cilantro!” he called back, and drove off laughing, going somewhere else.


	2. Breakfast Together

The bed and breakfast was a small, comfortable little cottage on the outskirts of Rhodes on Providence Island. Steven had parked the Dondai back in Constitution City in Haven and had taken the ferry over to the island. He was enjoying traveling north so far; nothing had changed terribly much about the scenery or culture, but he still felt that he was making progress. True to his word, he had tried not to rush through Keystone or Jersey or Empire more than was necessary to get to Providence Island in time, and he’d made sure to stay at least a night each in Democratically Elected Leader of Prussia, Orange City, and Empire City before moving on. Still, he was glad to be somewhere truly new.

The jingle of the front door made Steven look up from where he was waiting awkwardly near the front desk. The bed and breakfast owner shuffled her way in from the kitchen, but Steven lifted a hand to stop her.

“It’s okay,” he said. “She’s the one I told you about.” The owner nodded and disappeared back into the kitchen.

He turned to the newcomer and smiled. “Hi Connie,” he said.

“Hi Steven,” said Connie, also smiling. They hugged, and even after they pulled apart, Steven felt stronger for having been hugged.

“Care to join me for breakfast?” said Steven in his best Li’l Butler impersonation, which was not very good at all.

Connie laughed. “I’d be charmed, good sir,” she said, following him to the breakfast area. There were two tables, one populated entirely by a very severe-looking man who was fastidiously cutting his sausage into ever-smaller pieces and one currently empty. Steven pulled out a chair for Connie at the empty table and, in turn, Connie pulled out a chair for Steven.

Connie reached for the bottle in the middle of the table. “Tap water,” she read aloud from the label. “Wow, they bottled it. Fancy.” She poured some into both their glasses.

“Only the fanciest of breakfast beverages for Steven Quartz Cutie Pie DeMayo Diamond Universe and his honored guest Constance Maheswaran,” said Steven.

Connie crinkled her nose. “Do me a favor and never call me Constance again,” she said. “It makes me sound like a rabbit in a children’s book.”

Steven was unsure how she had come to this conclusion, and on top of that thought that he personally would quite like to sound like a rabbit in a children’s book, but said only, “Noted.”

The owner bustled in, carrying two full plates over to their table. “Two orders of blueberry waffles, bacon, and eggs for Steven?”

“That’s me,” said Steven unnecessarily. The owner set the plates down in front of them and headed back into the kitchen after checking that there was nothing else they needed.

“Wow, Steven,” said Connie. “This looks really good!”

“I know, right?” said Steven. “I told you I know how to choose a bed and breakfast.”

Connie paused with her fork halfway through her waffle. “Wait a minute. You ordered bacon! Aren’t you a vegetarian?”

Steven sighed. “I don’t know. I keep going back and forth.”

“What do you mean?” asked Connie before popping a bite of waffle into her mouth.

Steven shrugged. “Well, I was a vegetarian for a while, and then I kinda just gave up on it. And I’ve been talking to my therapist about it, and it made me realize that I maybe didn’t become a vegetarian for the healthiest of reasons. But then I also had pretty unhealthy reasons for giving up on it. So I’m still trying to unpack all that. It’s kind of 50/50 whether I’m gonna eat this bacon or not,” he added, trying to close with a joke.

Connie looked confused. “What do you mean your reasons were unhealthy?”

“Well,” said Steven, “last year I was kind of at this point in my life where I wanted to feel like I was an adult, you know? And I wanted to be everything for everyone, and I also wanted to set a good example for the Gems in Little Homeschool.” Connie nodded; these were feelings he’d opened up about before in the past few months.

“And I kept telling them to respect organic life, and then one day I was teaching a cooking class and Moss Agate asked me why I ate animals if I was supposed to respect them, and I didn’t know how to answer that and I started feeling really bad about it, so I decided to become a vegetarian.” Steven pushed the eggs around on his plate. “And I kind of liked it because it felt like I was growing up, like I wasn’t just a kid who ate hot dogs anymore. But I also missed eating hot dogs.”

“Is that why you gave it up?” said Connie.

“No,” said Steven. “I didn’t give it up because I decided I wanted to. It was just because I had also kind of given up on myself at that point. I didn’t see the point in trying anymore.” He sighed. “So now I’m not sure what I should do. Any choice I make, I worry it’s for the wrong reasons. Am I becoming a vegetarian again because I think I owe the world something? Am I eating meat again just to prove that I don’t?”

Connie looked thoughtful. “What does your therapist say?”

Steven shrugged. “She just says, ‘what do you want to eat, Steven?’” He grimaced. “That’s the whole problem. I don’t know! I want to eat bacon because bacon is delicious, but I don’t want to eat bacon because pigs are really cute and deserve my respect.”

“I get that,” said Connie, who was eating her bacon at this exact moment. “I’ve felt that way too. I think you just have to decide what’s more important to you.”

“But I don’t know,” Steven groaned.

“Well, do you want to eat your bacon right now?” said Connie.

Steven looked at his bacon. It looked back at him balefully. “Not really,” he said. “Not after talking about it.”

“Okay,” said Connie. “So don’t.”

“So that’s it?” said Steven. “I should be a vegetarian?”

“I didn’t say that,” said Connie. “I just said, don’t eat your bacon right now. I think maybe you’re overthinking what your therapist said to you, Steven. I don’t think she was asking what do you want to eat forever. I think she just wants you to think about what you truly want to eat when you sit down to eat. You don’t have to plan your whole life out or give yourself a label like vegetarian or meat-eater. You can take it day by day.”

Steven put his head in his hands. “Ugh,” he said. “That makes so much more sense than how I was thinking about it. You’d make a much better therapy patient than me.”

Connie laughed. “That’s because I’ve been doing it longer,” she said. “You get better with practice.” Steven smiled; he kept forgetting she was in therapy too. Probably because she was a little quieter about it. For one thing, she hadn’t had to turn into a giant pink monster before even allowing herself to get help.

“I hope so,” said Steven. “Right now I don’t feel very good at it. Like just now, with the overthinking it. I’m always doing that.”

“You’re trying not to backslide,” said Connie. “That’s good. And you’re talking to people about it, which is also good.”

“I know,” said Steven. He shook his head to clear himself of his thoughts and cut off another chunk of waffle. “Enough about me. Tell me about your college tour! How was Umber?”

Connie shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s a really good school. But I didn’t like the vibe so much. It felt kind of pretentious.” She frowned. “I don’t like it when institutions get full of themselves like that. I think they should be more open to critique and change.”

Steven thought about Homeworld, stuck in place for thousands of years, only now blooming with new life. “That makes sense,” he said. “What other schools have you visited?”

“So far, just Aardvark and Whale,” said Connie. “I kind of felt the same way about them, too. I don’t know. Maybe I’m not cut out for a Grapevine League education.” She looked downcast as she said it.

Steven desperately tried to think of something comforting to say that wouldn’t reveal that he had no idea what a Grapevine League was. “Well, botany isn’t for everybody,” he said, completely failing.

Connie gave him a weird look, then laughed. “The Grapevine League is like a bunch of elite schools, Steven. It’s not about botany.”

“Oh,” said Steven. ‘Elite schools’ definitely sounded more up Connie's alley. But still: “Who says they’re elite?” he said. “Everyone on Homeworld thought the Diamonds were elite too. But in the end they -- we -- were just Gems like everyone else. You helped save the entire galaxy. That sounds pretty elite to me, no matter what college you go to.”

Connie smiled at him. “You’re right, Steven. I shouldn’t let outdated authorities decide for me what kind of school counts as a worthwhile educational experience. In fact,” she said, sounding more decisive by the minute, “I should disrupt that hegemonic mode of thinking whenever possible! No Grapevine League for me! Where’s the nearest community college?” She pulled out her myPhone and started typing.

“Uh, probably Rhodes Community College,” said Steven, who didn’t know a lot about colleges but was decent at guessing games.

“Rhodes Community College!” Connie confirmed. “I’m adding it to my tour list. Thanks, Steven.” She smiled at him. “You always make me think about things differently.”

“You’re welcome,” said Steven, not entirely sure what exactly he had accomplished here.

They finished their breakfast and Steven checked out of the B&B. They ended up walking down the street together, Steven’s overnight bag slung across his shoulder.

“Do you have to get back to your hotel?” asked Steven.

Connie checked the time on her phone. “My dad’s not expecting me for another hour or so,” she said. “Wanna do something in the meantime?”

“Sure!” said Steven. “What do you wanna do?”

Connie scratched her head. “Well, I was kind of hoping you’d have an idea.”

Steven had the sudden realization that he and Connie were about to be trapped in an endless game of Well, I Don't Know, What Do _You_ Want To Do? if one of them didn’t do something about it fast.

“Uh...we could go to...the bookstore!” he cried with a flash of inspiration.

Connie looked surprised. “Oh, is there a good bookstore around here?”

“Yes!” said Steven, whipping out his phone and typing in “bookstore near me”. “It’s...uh...half a mile away! Tanager Books.” He showed her his phone screen. “You can give me some book recs for the road!”

Connie smiled, a little more weakly than Steven had expected. “Sure,” she said. “That sounds fun.”

Tanager Books was small yet cozy, with colorful displays and a healthy amount of customers. Steven and Connie prowled through the YA Sci-Fi/Fantasy section, on the hunt for the perfect book to take road-tripping. Every so often Steven would pick up a book and ask Connie if she’d read it or knew anything about it, and she’d shrug and say not really.

Eventually Steven got exasperated. “C’mon, Connie! You said you’d give me a book rec.”

“Technically you said that,” Connie reminded him with a gentle smirk.

“You know what I mean,” said Steven. “You always know what the best books are! What have you been into lately?”

Connie looked uncomfortable. “Well, I mean, I’ve been pretty busy lately, what with cram school and everything.”

“But school hasn’t started back up yet!” said Steven, and then paused. “Right?” He still wasn’t entirely sure how school schedules worked.

“No,” Connie admitted, “but, you know, it never hurts to prepare.” She shrugged, running her fingers over the spines of several of the books in front of her. “I just haven’t had as much time to read lately, I guess.”

“But you love reading!” said Steven. “Can’t you read during your breaks? Or schedule in new breaks just for reading? You once told me reading is really good for your brain, even if it’s reading for fun!”

“Yeah, I guess I could,” said Connie, sounding unenthusiastic.

“Okay, great,” said Steven. “So what would you read during these hypothetical reading breaks?”

“Um,” said Connie, taking a book off the shelf, “I don’t really know. This looks okay, I guess?” She held up the book. It was called _Archibald and the Wolves of Destruction_.

“Hm,” said Steven. “Let me see.” He took the book and read the back cover aloud. “‘Archibald Tate is an ordinary fifteen-year-old boy, or so he thinks. But when his parents mysteriously disappear, he discovers he is the heir to the throne of the Wolves of Destruction, an order of magical wolves with one purpose: to ensure the world’s destruction.’ Hey, that sounds pretty good!”

Connie looked unconvinced. “Maybe,” she said.

“What’s wrong with it?” said Steven, flipping through it. He turned back to the inside cover and stopped. “Ooh, look, it’s got a positive review from the author of the Frog Wizards series! You love those books!”

“Yeah,” said Connie, still looking dubious.

Steven closed the book. “Okay, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” said Connie, turning back to the bookshelves. “Let’s find you another book. It’s always good to have a backup.”

“Connie,” said Steven. “Talk to me. Is there something going on you’re not telling me? You used to love telling me about all your favorite books! You would watch me as I read them because you couldn’t wait for me to finish so we could talk about them!”

Connie paused with her hand reaching halfway to another book. “I...Steven…”

“What is it?” Steven asked, trying to sound gentle.

Connie yanked her hand down and closed it into a fist. “Ugh! Steven, I _can’t read these kinds of books anymore_!”

Steven blinked. “What do you mean? Why not?”

“Just look at the one you’re holding!” said Connie. “I mean, Archibald’s a _teenager_ , and his parents _disappear_? And he finds out he’s heir to the throne of a bunch of wolves who want to _destroy the world_?”

“Well, yeah,” said Steven. “That’s the plot.”

“That’s _awful_!” said Connie.

“I dunno,” said Steven, shrugging self-consciously. “I thought it sounded kinda interesting.”

“I don’t mean it’s an awful _plot_ ,” said Connie. “I mean it’s awful for _Archibald_. He’s a _kid_! Like me! Like _you_!”

Steven looked down at the cover of _Archibald and the Wolves of Destruction_. Archibald didn’t look all that young on the cover, less “awkward teenager” and more “generic ambiguously-aged YA protagonist gazing broodily out at the audience”. But Steven thought to himself: fifteen years old. That made Archibald younger than Steven was now. Steven remembered being fifteen, and tried to imagine himself at that age finding out he was heir to the throne of an order of wolves that wanted to destroy the world, and then realized he really didn’t have to do much imagining at all.

“Oh,” he said. “Huh.”

Connie sighed and slid down the bookshelves until she was sitting on the floor. Steven joined her.

“I used to love those kinds of books because I loved imagining that something exciting like that might happen to me,” Connie began. “And then I met you. And you had this magical sci-fi destiny. And I was happy to tag along, but honestly, I was always kind of jealous.”

Steven laughed, less out of humor and more out of surprise. “I was jealous of _you_!” he said. “You were _way_ cooler than me.”

Connie nudged him with her shoulder. “I know _you_ think that,” she said. “But I didn’t. And even when things started getting serious and I started getting nightmares and scary thoughts about everything that was happening, I think part of me always thought that was just because I wasn’t cut out to be a cool young adult adventure story protagonist like you were. That no matter how hard I tried, I was still too scared or too selfish or too human.”

“But that’s ridiculous!” said Steven.

Connie shrugged. “It’s what I thought,” she said. “And then…”

“And then?” Steven prompted, although he had a terrible feeling he knew what she was going to say next.

“And then you turned into a giant pink Gojira monster,” said Connie, with a well-practiced attempt at the original Japanese pronunciation. “And it wasn’t the first time I’d seen you be vulnerable, but it was the first time I saw the full extent of everything you’d been going through. And it kind of made me realize that this whole having to save the galaxy at a young age thing...it really sucks. And it sucks for everyone, no matter how ‘good’ you are at it.”

“Well, yeah,” said Steven. “I could have told you that.”

Connie laughed. “I guess you could have,” she said, “but I’m not sure I would’ve believed you until then.” She hugged her knees to her chest. “So that’s why I can’t really read these kinds of books anymore. They’re all about some kid who has a lot of horrible stuff happen to them and has way more weighing on their shoulders than anyone ever should, much less a teenager. And then they save the day and it’s all just fine. They go back to their life like nothing’s wrong. And that’s just...it’s just not true.” She closed her eyes. “When I try to read those books now...it feels like I’m betraying you. Like I’m betraying _me_.” She opened her eyes again and turned to face Steven. “I know. It’s silly.”

“It’s not silly,” said Steven, and it really wasn’t. He’d never really had the same problem, but that was because he didn’t often think of himself as having any commonality with YA sci-fi/fantasy protagonists. On paper he did, sure, but throughout his many traumatic adventures and misadventures, he’d never conceived of the things that happened to him as part of some story that he was the unfortunate hero of. They were just his life, and he was just the one who had to live it. (Assuming, of course, that he didn’t turn out to be secretly his mom, a fear which had taken up a good portion of his mental real estate for a couple years there, and which most YA adventure protagonists never really worried too much about.)

He looked reflectively at the bookshelf opposite them, laden with even more books Connie apparently couldn’t bring herself to read. “What about other kinds of books?” he asked. “Like, real-life type books, or romances, or books about funny animals or something.”

Connie sighed. “I’ve tried. I just don’t really like any of those types of books. We have to read realistic fiction in school and you get kind of sick of it after a while. And I think I’m a little old for books about funny talking animals, except for the weirdly violent subgenre of talking-animal books aimed at adults, which I don’t like either. And you know how I feel about romance books.” Steven did. It was a major topic of disagreement between the two of them.

Steven scratched his head. “Well,” he said, “what if you tried writing instead?”

Connie tilted her head. “Writing?” she said. “I mean, I used to write fanfiction for the Spirit Morph Saga, but that was years ago.” 

Steven shrugged. “It doesn’t have to be fanfiction,” he said. “You can make your own story. A YA sci-fi adventure, only you can tell it the way you want it to be told.”

Connie appeared to give this some thought. “That does sound kinda fun,” she said. “But I don’t know. Coming up with a whole story and plotting it all out, all while trying to study?”

“Hey, I never said it had to be _good_ ,” Steven said with a grin, although he knew as well as anyone that Connie would never be satisfied with producing subpar work. “And who says you have to do it all yourself? Maybe we could write a story together!”

“Are you sure?” said Connie, looking worried. Steven wasn’t sure why until she continued, “I don’t want you to do this just because you want to fix this for me.”

Steven smiled. It felt good to know there were people watching out for him, especially since he wasn’t all that good at it himself yet. “I think it could be good for me too,” he said. “And if it becomes too stressful for either of us, we can stop anytime.”

Connie nodded slowly. “That actually sounds like a pretty good idea,” she said, and then, after nodding more confidently, “Okay. I’m in. Let’s talk logistics. Do you want to make a Boogle Docs and work on each chapter together? Or trade off, I write a chapter, you write a chapter? What do you think?”

Steven thought for a minute. “Let’s trade off,” he said. “No plotting it out, no planning ahead. Just a chapter at a time. Sound good?”

Connie smiled. “Yeah. Sounds good.”

Steven stood up and offered her his hand, which she took gratefully. “I promise not to put too much romance in it,” he said.

“I’ll hold you to that,” said Connie, laughing. “Do you still want to look for books to take with you?”

“I’ll just get this one for now,” said Steven, tapping _Archibald and the Wolves of Destruction_. Connie quirked an eyebrow in surprise, and Steven shrugged. “What can I say? We talked about it so much that now I gotta find out what happens.”

Connie smiled, shaking her head, and she and Steven walked to the register, hand in hand.


	3. The Curse

Steven had been in Second England for about a week and he found that he was quite enjoying it so far. He’d explored the western and central parts of the state and was now planning on spending another week exploring the eastern part until he eventually reached Yellowfin Tuna Cape. The people here were kind of rude, true, but in a way that felt honest and refreshing. It was like an entire state full of Larses.

Right now he was holed up in a restaurant called Patrick’s in the state capital of Foxborough, dipping some bread in some soup (as one naturally did when one was presented with bread and soup) and eavesdropping on a conversation between two such Larses, one of whom was sitting at the bar and the other of whom was manning it.

“I don’t know why I even bother to come here anymore,” the seated Lars complained, gesturing to a TV behind the bar whose screen was dark and cracked. “When are you gonna get that thing fixed?”

“When the repair people come to fix it,” said the bartending Lars evenly.

“But I wanna watch the game!” said Lars 1.

“Me too, buddy,” said Lars 2. “We can’t always get what we want.”

“It’s probably for the best,” a third, heretofore unseen Lars chimed in from the table next to Steven’s. “You know they’re going to lose.”

Lars 1 huffed. “Yeah, right. The curse.” He took a very disdainful gulp of water from his glass.

“The curse?” someone asked. When all three Larses turned to look at him, Steven realized it had been him. He shrunk back a little, but then realized that, just like the real Lars or a Zootsie Pop, these three were probably all soft and gooey on the inside too. So he barreled onward: “There’s a curse?”

The bartending Lars (who was maybe Lars 2? Steven had now lost track) shook his head sadly. “Aye,” he said, affecting a strange pseudo-medieval accent with ease, as if he had never spoken in any other way. “’Tis a sad state of affairs.” He took out a rag and began wiping down the counter. “You must not be from around these parts, if you’ve never heard tale of it.”

“Indeed,” said Steven, deepening his voice and trying to get into character. “I hail from, uh, Delmarva.”

The three Larses squinted at him. “So, like, the south?” said the third and newest Lars.

“That’s right,” said Steven, even though it wasn’t really. “Esteban Universidad, from the depths of the south, at your service. What were you saying about this curse?”

The bartending Lars, who seemed to be the only one in the medieval groove, sighed and began wiping down glasses with his rag. “It’s a terrible affliction indeed,” he said. “E’er since that dreadful year when the Rude Baby turned his back on us, we have never known victory.”

This raised many more questions than it answered. “Victory?” echoed Steven.

“Against the Yankee Doodles,” the third Lars explained. “You know. Baseball.”

Steven’s eyes widened. “Oh, baseball!” he exclaimed. “I love baseball! You guys like baseball here?”

Lars 1 laughed, in that slightly derisive way common to Larses everywhere. “Oh, you’re really not from around here, huh.” Medieval Bartender Lars took this opportunity to snatch Lars 1’s glass away from him and start wiping it down as well, even though it still had water in it, and Lars 1 made a futile attempt to grab it back. “Hey! I wasn’t finished!”

“We don’t just like baseball here, Esteban,” Medieval Bartender Lars explained. “We love it. We live it. It’s in our very blood.” He returned Lars 1’s glass to him, now empty of water but, it had to be said, sparkling clean. “And for many years, we were the best at it. The Foxborough Crimson Booties won every game, took home every prize. And then it happened.” He stared off into the distance like some kind of war-torn hero, plagued by thoughts of a home he could never return to. “The Rude Baby betrayed us.”

“The Rude Baby,” repeated Steven reverently, no longer sure what anything meant anymore.

“That’s right,” said the third Lars. “The Rude Baby. See, one year at a game, this lady brought her baby with her to watch. And this baby, he was just super rude. He was the rudest baby ever. And he heckled the Empire City Yankee Doodles, and he stuck his tongue out at them, and he even threw a hot dog at them. And it was the biggest blowout in baseball history. We crushed them! So every year after that, there would be a hunt for the rudest baby in town, and we’d bring them to the game and stick a hot dog in their little baby hands, and they’d heckle the Yankee Doodles and throw the hot dog at them, and we’d win. We used to give thanks after every game that the Rude Baby had blessed us again.”

“But then disaster struck,” Melodramatic Bartender Lars Who Probably LARPed In His Free Time cut in, while Lars 1 rolled his eyes, faked a yawn, and mimed going to sleep. “One year the Rude Baby heckled the Crimson Booties instead!”

“Oh no!” Steven gasped.

“On that day, we were cursed,” Bartender Lars continued. “We were cursed to never again win a game of baseball, especially against our most dreaded of foes, the Yankee Doodles. And we have yet to break that curse. For years now, we have brought Rude Baby after Rude Baby to game after game, hoping that one of them would spare us their wrath, and curse those dastardly Doodles instead. But ’tis all to no avail; every last one of them heckles only the Booties, and thus curses us anew.”

“That’s horrible!” said Steven.

“Aye,” said Bartender Lars gravely.

“Yeah, it really sucks,” said the third Lars.

“Whatever,” said Lars 1, who, Steven had decided, was the Larsiest of them all. “Curses aren’t real.”

But Steven had already turned inward, gears whirring in his head as he attempted to tackle this problem. Whether or not it was a curse was irrelevant, he decided; what was important was that it was causing the good people of Second England strife. And therefore someone needed to do something about it, and that someone was --

\-- was --

\-- Steven brought his train of thought to an abrupt halt, took a bite of soup-dipped bread, and recalibrated. He was doing it again, he realized, trying to fix a problem that wasn’t his to solve. When he ran into situations like this, his therapist had suggested he go through a mental checklist, to see if the problem really were something he had to fix himself. The checklist Steven had written for himself went as follows:

  1. Is this problem immediately life-threatening to you or anyone else? _(No.)_
  2. Did you, personally, cause this problem? _(No.)_
  3. Are you the only person who can fix this problem? _(No.)_
  4. Do you know very much about this problem and what fixing it would require? _(No.)_
  5. Will fixing this specific problem actually make you, as a person, happier? _(No.)_
  6. Is there any other reason for you to fix this problem, beyond the fact that it is a problem and you have built your identity around fixing problems? _(No.)_



Well, that settled it, thought Steven. He wouldn’t try to fix this problem.

...But Bartender Lars had looked so sad, and the third Lars had sounded so defeated, like they’d just given up all hope...and people needed hope, didn’t they? When people didn’t have hope, they turned into giant pink monsters. Steven knew that from experience. Reframing it that way, he went through his checklist again:

  1. Is this problem immediately life-threatening to you or anyone else? _(No, BUT someone might turn into a giant pink monster!)_
  2. Did you, personally, cause this problem? _(Still no.)_
  3. Are you the only person who can fix this problem? _(No, BUT it’s not like anyone else is stepping up to the plate! Ha, stepping up to the plate! Get it? Because it’s a baseball problem? You’re so funny, Steven Universe. Thank you, Steven Universe, I try my best.)_
  4. Do you know very much about this problem and what fixing it would require? _(Yes, because I am great at giving people hope!)_
  5. Will fixing this specific problem actually make you, as a person, happier? _(Yes, because I will be happy with the knowledge that I gave hope to a whole city/state/commonwealth(?)!)_
  6. Is there any other reason for you to fix this problem, beyond the fact that it is a problem and you have built your identity around fixing problems? _(Ummm, I’m pretty good with babies?)_



Well, that settled it, thought Steven. He had to fix this problem immediately! But how?

That was when he got it. The perfect idea. And all he would need was a ticket to the game.

Good thing his dad was rich.

The game itself took place in Razor Park, and was just about to start when Steven arrived. He bought some Kracker Kernels, which were delightfully crunchy and doused in just the right amount of dulce de leche, as always. There were some brands you could just trust, no matter where you went.

He munched happily on his purchase all through the singing of the National Anthem, which he’d never actually learned but, he was thrilled to discover, was mostly about rattlesnakes. The First Pitch was thrown by a singer that he was pretty sure Jenny Pizza had been a big fan of a couple years back. And then it was time.

Just as the players were getting into position, Steven stood up, delicately placed his now mostly-eaten bag of Kracker Kernels on his chair, and floated down into the middle of the field. A hubbub rose up around him. The players stopped what they were doing and stared.

“May I have your attention please!” he called out, extremely unnecessarily given that he definitely already had it and was currently being projected on all available screens.

“Good people of Foxborough,” he said, which caused an uproar of protest in certain parts of the audience, so he continued, “and lovely visitors from Empire City,” which caused an uproar of protest in the other part of the audience, “I know that usually around this time, it is tradition for the Rude Baby to cast judgment upon one of your teams.”

There were groans from the Booties fans and jeers from the Doodles fans. Some security guards muscled their way through the crowd down to the field to try to grab Steven, but one of the Crimson Booties, whose jersey identified him as Rodriguez, held up a hand to stop them.

“But it doesn’t have to be that way!” Steven went on. “This whole Rude Baby thing started in the first place because you guys couldn’t get along. But why not? You guys have so much in common!” Here he gestured at players from both teams, whose uniforms and caps looked confusingly similar, and then out at the audience, who were all decked out in much more distinct team paraphernalia. “I mean, look at yourselves! You’ve all come together to experience the joy of a baseball game, whether as players or audience members! You could be anywhere right now but instead, you’re here! Why? Because you all love baseball!”

The players on the field looked at each other, in a way that Steven hoped meant they were considering his carefully thought-out argument.

“You love it so much that you hate each other over it,” Steven said. “You think the Rude Baby has cursed you. Or maybe you think the Rude Baby has cursed the other team depending on what team you support,” he added in haste, remembering that he was addressing both teams. “But you’re wrong! The real curse that haunts you is your hatred for each other! And until you put your hatred aside, you’ll never reverse it.” He gave his chest an impassioned thump right over where he estimated his heart to be. “So that’s what I’m here to ask of you today. Open your hearts to each other! Stop letting your hatred consume you! Let your shared passion for baseball unite you instead of dividing you! Embrace your differences! Love one another! _Break the curse!_ ”

Silence.

Then a hot dog hit him in the face.

Steven looked up, shocked, and found the culprit in the crowd. They were easy to spot, because everyone else was looking at them too. They had a cruel smile on their face, as if they had enjoyed nothing more in their entire life than hitting Steven in the face with a hot dog. And indeed, that might well have been true, for their entire life could not have lasted more than a couple months up until now.

Steven stared. The Rude Baby stared back.

Then, ever so slowly, the Rude Baby stuck their tongue out at Steven and blew a raspberry. _“Thpbbbt!”_

It was the “Thpbbt!” heard ’round the world. The park exploded. And, to Steven’s horror, he realized that the park was exploding in jeers. And they were all directed at him.

_“Serves you right!”_

_“Get this guy outta here!”_

_“Who does he think he is?”_

_“Get to the game already!”_

Other food started to be thrown his way, hot dogs and pretzels and Kracker Kernels and even a cabbage that someone had smuggled in. This time, when the security guards converged on Steven’s location, Rodriguez made no move to stop them. He only gave Steven a parting thump on the shoulder and a pitying smile that Steven couldn’t quite interpret. Then he gestured for silence, and announced to the crowd, “The Rude Baby has spoken! There will be no truce today! Let the battle commence!”

The crowd cheered, even the Yankee Doodles fans, and Steven allowed himself to be escorted out in shame.

A few hours later, Steven was back at Patrick’s, drowning his sorrows in corn chowder (with extra oyster crackers, of course). He’d been there for some time, eating his feelings, but in moderation, because he knew logically that eating your feelings was bad for you.

He’d done it again. Gone off and tried to fix something he had no obligation to fix, without fully understanding the problem or asking any of the people involved, and it had blown up in his face. Literally. A hot dog had exploded all over his face. He was pretty sure he’d gotten it all off, but it felt like it was still there, a neon sign blaring to the rest of the world: _“This is Steven Universe and all he does is mess things up!”_

He sighed. He knew he shouldn’t think like that. As his therapist had reminded him many a time, beating yourself up for not healing fast enough only gave you more bruises to heal from. Recovery was hard. And, he thought wryly, it was even harder when what you were trying to recover from was basically your entire personality.

“Hey,” said a voice. Steven looked up. It was one of the Larses, the one who didn’t believe in curses. He was sitting at the bar again, or maybe he’d just never left. He was gesturing at Steven with his water glass, which was now full again. “You’re the guy from earlier.”

“Yep,” said Steven, physically stopping himself from fully slumping into his chowder. “That’s me. Esteban Universidad from down south, at your service.” The role wasn’t quite as fun to play this time around.

“Don’t tell me all that curse talk got to you,” scoffed Skeptical Lars.

Steven almost laughed. “No,” he said. “I don’t believe in curses.” And he didn’t. If anything about his disastrous speech held up three hours later, it was the fact that, in Steven’s experience, the real curses were the ones people brought upon themselves.

“Good,” said Skeptical Lars, and downed half of his glass of water. He looked longingly at the broken TV behind the bar. “So, how do you think the game’s going?”

Steven didn’t have an answer for him, and luckily he didn’t have to, because just then the door burst open and a gaggle of Crimson Booties fans burst through. “We did it!” cried the one in front, a large, bear-like man wearing a jersey with the number 16 on it. “We won! _The curse is broken!_ ”

The bar erupted in cheers and toasts. Skeptical Lars whistled and clapped. Bartender Lars popped out from wherever he’d been hiding and gaped at the newcomers. “Really?” he asked, having reverted back to his normal speaking voice.

“Yes, really!” declared Number 16. “It was amazing!”

“It really was,” piped up another fan, who was wearing an ostentatious hat. “You should’ve seen it!”

“But what about the Rude Baby?” asked Bartender Lars, as the fans swarmed an empty table.

“That was the best part!” said Number 16. “Neither team was cursed! Some random guy got the Rude Baby to heckle him instead!”

“He freed us!” said Ostentatious Hat, setting off another round of toasts.

Steven blinked. They were, he realized, talking about him. Talking _positively_ about him. Because, by inadvertently drawing the Rude Baby’s ire, he had apparently lifted the curse after all. And now everyone saw his speech not as an embarrassing failure, but as a noble sacrifice.

Steven groaned into his chowder. It was even worse than he’d thought. He hadn’t just barged in and tried to fix things, he’d full-on Baby-Watermelon’d himself, without even meaning to. What good was it going to therapy for your martyr complex if people insisted on making a martyr out of you anyway?

Steven realized it had gotten quiet. He looked back up from his chowder at the newcomers, who were staring at him, and he suddenly remembered that he'd just groaned rather loudly.

“Hey,” said Number 16, a grin breaking across his face, “you’re the guy!”

Steven coughed. “Uh, what? Sorry? I’m from the south.” It was not, upon reflection, a very effective denial.

“You’re totally the guy!” said Number 16, and came over to clap him on the back. He turned back to Bartender Lars. “This is the guy!” he said again, pointing excitedly at Steven. “He saved us from the Rude Baby! He broke the curse!”

Bartender Lars stared at Steven incredulously. “Esteban?” he said in disbelief. “It was you? You really broke the curse?”

Steven laughed nervously. “Uh, kind of,” he said.

Skeptical Lars rolled his eyes. “You gotta be kidding me,” he said.

“Let me buy you a drink, kid,” said Number 16. “Anything you like. It’s on me.”

Steven considered this. “A hot chocolate would be nice,” he admitted.

“Get this kid a hot chocolate!” Number 16 bellowed. “With extra marshmallows!”

“I don’t think we have any hot chocolate,” said Bartender Lars.

“This man saved the Crimson Booties,” said Number 16, pounding a fist on Steven’s table and making his soup jump. “If he wants hot chocolate, he’ll get hot chocolate.”

Bartender Lars shrugged. “I’ll look in the back,” he said.

Number 16 sat down at Steven’s table. “You know, I heard they were thinking about making a statue of you,” he said.

“Really?” said Steven. When he thought about it, a statue might actually be kind of nice. No one had ever built a statue of him before, not even the Diamonds, who often acted as if they were in some kind of competition to be the galaxy’s proudest grandmas.

“Yeah,” said Number 16, heedless of Steven’s internal monologue. “That way the Rude Baby can heckle you even when you’re not there!”

“Oh,” said Steven.

“Hot chocolate, extra marshmallows,” said Bartender Lars, the world’s fastest hot-chocolate brewer, as he set the mug down next to one of Steven’s many packets of oyster crackers. “Only for Esteban Universidad.” He tossed off a salute -- thankfully not of the Diamond variety -- and headed back to his place behind the bar.

Number 16 bid Steven farewell and went to join his fellow fans, leaving Steven alone with his thoughts and his chowder and his mug of hot chocolate. He took a sip of said hot chocolate. It wasn’t the best he’d ever had, but it wasn’t bad for a place that supposedly didn’t sell hot chocolate at all. And there were quite a lot of extra marshmallows. Overall, he’d have to say it was a pretty good hot chocolate experience.

He sighed. He should’ve known better than to get hopeful about the statue. That was what you got, in the end, when you tried to fix other people’s problems for them: a statue of you for a rude baby to eternally throw hot dogs at, your image made permanent in stone only as target practice for a curse that probably wasn’t even real. And, if you were lucky, a mug of hot chocolate.

Steven closed his eyes, and stopped thinking about curses and statues and rude babies and all the things he couldn’t and shouldn’t fix and yet wanted to fix anyway, and sipped his hot chocolate instead.

It really was pretty good.


	4. The Narra Tree

Steven had only just checked into his hotel room when Lion burst through a portal and tumbled onto the bed.

“Hey buddy!” said Steven. Lion yawned and tried to pretend he had landed with perfect grace exactly where he’d planned on landing. Then he curled up -- on the pillows -- and went to sleep.

Steven rolled his eyes. Lion did this pretty much every time Steven’s weekly Lars hang-out rolled around. (He was still trying to think of a cool name to call their meetups. Lars had vetoed all of his ideas so far immediately, even the really good ones like “Space Hang” and “Sun Incinerator Visit-erator” and “Off Color Jam”.)

Steven took out his phone and sent Connie a quick text letting her know that Lion had arrived safely. Connie had repeatedly assured him that he didn’t need to do this, but Steven knew that he always felt better when he knew Lion was safely at his destination, and shouldn’t you treat other people how you’d like to be treated? So he always texted to let her know.

He also did a quick Boogle search to find a good spot for dinner so that he would already have something in mind when he got back from space. He had just arrived in Nashfort, Tuckessee, today, and he really didn’t know much about the city except that it was supposedly a classical music hub, but he was liking what he’d seen of it so far.

It was definitely a change from West Keystone, which he’d spent a few days exploring after coming back down south from Granite City, Mainland (which, Steven had felt, was a city unduly proud of how far north it was). Steven had considered going back to the DeMayos’ house and actually trying to meet them, but he’d decided that was maybe a bit too big of a can of worms to open right now. So he’d hung around in Buckeye City for a couple days and then moved on. He wouldn’t go so far as to call West Keystone a “meh” state, because he didn’t think he had the capacity for that kind of derision in him, but he would definitely admit it was a middle-of-the-road kind of experience.

Satisfied with his choice of Aquamexican restaurant for the evening, Steven pocketed his phone again, adjusted his jacket, clambered onto the bed, and hopped into Lion’s mane.

When he emerged from Lars’s hair, he promptly found himself falling onto another bed, on top of what he soon realized was Lars’s legs.

“Ow!” squealed Lars, sitting up in the bed. He was, thankfully, fully clothed, although he pulled up the covers around himself anyway when he spotted Steven. “Steven?! What are you doing here?!”

“Uh, weekly hang-out?” said Steven, scratching his head. “Is something wrong, Lars?”

“I was sleeping!” Lars snapped. “You can’t just come through my head when I’m sleeping!”

Steven frowned. “Do you even need to sleep?”

Lars paused. “Well, no,” he admitted. “But I like to. I get tired sometimes. Emotionally.” He crossed his arms in a defensive Lars-Talking-About-Emotions gesture. “Sleeping helps me clear my mind. Or have dreams about, like, carrots or whatever.”

“That makes sense,” said Steven. “I also have dreams about carrots.”

Lars’s eyes narrowed. “You’re distracting me,” he said.

“No I’m not,” said Steven. “I don’t even know what I would be distracting you from.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Lars, “maybe from the fact that you popped out of my head _while I was sleeping_?”

Steven stared at Lars, chagrined. Lars hadn’t been this annoyed with Steven in a long time, and Steven wasn’t entirely sure what was driving the engine of his annoyance today. Still, he supposed an apology never hurt anyone. “Sorry,” he said. “I would’ve waited ’til later if I knew you were asleep. I can come back if you’re still tired?”

Lars groaned. “It’s not about me being tired,” he said, running a hand across his scarred face. “It’s about you mucking about in my head while I’m asleep!”

“Mucking about?” said Steven, appalled. “I would never muck about! Especially not in your head!”

“Oh, so I guess I imagined that time you _possessed_ me in my sleep?” Lars bit out. Steven flinched. A stilted silence descended on the room.

Steven had almost forgotten about that day. He’d thought -- foolishly, he now supposed -- that Lars had too. Steven tried desperately to think of something to say that wasn’t totally banal. He kept coming up empty.

Finally Lars sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean that.” He threw the covers off and stood up.

Steven blinked. “Yes you did,” he said. From what he could tell, Lars had meant it pretty hard.

“No, I didn’t,” said Lars. “C’mon. Let’s go hang out.”

“No, wait,” said Steven. “Let’s talk about this.”

“Let’s not,” said Lars. “Just forget it, okay?” He grabbed his cool space pirate coat off of the lone chair in his quarters and shrugged it on.

“Lars, please,” Steven begged, and something in his voice must have given Lars pause, because he turned back around to face Steven. He looked tired, Steven noticed, more tired than Steven could remember him looking before. Maybe because Steven had interrupted his sleep.

Or maybe...because he was just tired of Steven.

Lars shook his head. “It’s fine, Steven. Okay? It was years ago.” Which was hardly reassuring and also kind of misleading, given that it hadn’t even been three years.

“But it’s not fine,” said Steven. “If it was fine, you wouldn’t have said anything about it. And you’re right. I did possess you.” He almost chokes on the words. “I possessed you. I took over your body. I took over your mind. I used you like a puppet.” He put his head in his hands, feeling the panic building. “Just like White Diamond.”

“White Diamond?” said Lars, sounding confused, and if Steven had been in a better frame of mind he might have remembered that Lars’s experience of White Diamond was pretty limited and had not included any body-snatching.

As it was, he just kept panicking. “White Diamond,” he repeated. “I’m...I’m exactly like her! Don’t you see?” He gestured at himself.

Lars looked skeptical. “Yeah, uh, no you’re not,” he said.

“Yes I am!” Steven insisted.

Lars sighed. “No, you’re not,” he said. “Look, Steven, I don’t want to argue about this. It’s clearly making you upset.”

“No, _you’re_ upset!” said Steven. “Because of _me_! Because of what I did!”

Lars’s eyes flashed with an emotion Steven couldn’t read. Or maybe it was a trick of the light. That happened sometimes. “I’m not upset. Okay? I’m fine. Now do you want to hang out with the Off-Colors or not?” It sounded like he was gritting his teeth.

Steven almost told him not to grit his teeth because Pearl had once given him a lecture on how that wore down your enamel. But he figured such a comment would probably not be welcome at this time. He curled into himself and shook his head. “No,” he said. “I think I should probably just go home.”

Lars looked disappointed, or maybe relieved, or maybe just annoyed again. But, “Okay,” was all he said. He knelt to the ground and, in a daze, Steven climbed back into his head.

He made his way over to Lion’s side of the dimension, prepared to re-enter the real world, and then hesitated. What if Lion were sleeping too? Actually, scratch that, he was definitely sleeping. But what if he didn’t like Steven coming through his mane while he was sleeping either? Sure, he’d never objected before, but maybe that was just because he was a cat and cats couldn’t talk!

This multitude of distressing possibilities bore down on Steven until he felt boxed-in and suffocated. Then he realized he was actually just literally suffocating. He produced a bubble around himself and breathed out at last.

He rolled up into a ball inside the bubble and tried to calm himself. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.

He’d just been trying to help Lars. He hadn’t meant to hurt him. He had just wanted to show him that there was a better way to be himself.

_I only want you to be yourself. If you can’t do that, I’ll do it for you_ , and the blinding light of White Diamond’s eyes. Always trying to make things better, always trying to fix what wasn’t broken. Always _helping_.

Steven squeezed his eyes shut, but that only made it worse. His mind, ever the traitor, put his memories on repeat, then leaned back and munched on popcorn as it watched the damage they wreaked on his heart. Lars’s anger back when he had found out what Steven had done. Lars’s anger today, not nearly as potent and somehow worse for it, somehow sadder, like _Maybe that’s why everyone liked the you-me better._

_Thank you, White Diamond. We feel so much better now,_ and the blinding light of White Diamond’s eyes.

Steven reached down, hoping to grab a fistful of grass, but there was only bubble beneath him. The texture surprised him, enough to open his eyes, and suddenly he was faced with a world far too pink, a world that would only be soft if he gave in and popped the bubble and stopped breathing.

(Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale.) No, he wouldn’t do that. He’d keep breathing. That was a very important first step, his therapist had told him. Keep breathing first. Then figure out the rest from there.

He did just that for some time. He couldn’t tell how long. Maybe minutes, maybe hours. But eventually he stopped having to stage-manage his own breathing, and he was able to stand up, and he was able to think to himself that it was probably time to go home.

But he threw a glance at Lars’s side of the dimension before he popped the bubble, and he thought it would be a shame to go without saying goodbye, even if Lars couldn’t hear it. He needed some kind of closure from this day. Closure was important to him, he’d learned, whether it was real or mostly just in his head. (Or, in this case, in Lars’s.)

So Steven rolled the bubble over to Lars’s side of the dimension and, in a fit of poetic sensibility, up the hill until he came to a stop just below the narra tree at the top.

He put one arm through the wall of the bubble and rested his hand on the tree. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. _I’m sorry, Lars,_ he thought. _I’ll see you again soon._

And somewhere deep inside his mind a voice answered, _Steven?_

Steven’s eyes flew open. His hand jerked back from the wood of the tree. _Lars?_ He tried to search his mind for the source of the voice, but he couldn’t seem to find it. Maybe he had imagined it after all.

He turned to look at the tree. Or maybe…

He put his hand back on the bark and tried to think loudly. _Lars? Are you there?_

_Steven?_ came Lars’s disbelieving voice. _Where are you? Are you in my head again?_

_Only literally,_ Steven “said”. _I mean, I’m in your hair, but I’m not in your mind._

_Oh,_ said Lars. _Uh...how are we talking?_

_I think we’re communicating through the tree,_ said Steven.

_Tree? What tree?_

_The tree in your head,_ said Steven, and then, upon realizing he’d never actually told Lars there was a tree in his head, added, _Uh, by the way, there’s a tree in your head._

_There is?!_ Lars did not sound particularly pleased about that revelation. _Since when?_

_Since you died,_ said Steven. _Sorry for never telling you. I kinda forgot you didn’t know._

There was a pause. Then Lars said, _I thought you were going home._

_Right,_ said Steven. _Sorry. I’ll, uh, get out of your hair._ He forced out a weak laugh that he wasn’t entirely sure Lars could hear.

_You don’t have to,_ said Lars. _If you want to talk, we can talk. I’ve, uh, cooled down a bit._

_Me too,_ said Steven.

_Okay,_ said Lars. _Good._

_Okay,_ said Steven. _Good._

Another pause, longer this time. Then: _So, uh, are you gonna come back through my head, or what?_

_Oh,_ said Steven. _Do you want me to?_

_I think that’s probably for the best,_ said Lars. _It’s kinda weird to talk to you this way._

_Right,_ said Steven. _Okay. Coming through now._

_Cool,_ said Lars, and Steven lifted his hand off the tree, rolled the bubble down the hill, popped it, and dived back through Lars’s hair.

When he emerged, it was again onto Lars’s bed, although now it had been neatly made, which was a surprise in and of itself. Lars was sitting upright on the covers, holding MC Bear Bear.

“Hi Steven,” he said, sounding subdued.

“Hi Lars,” said Steven. He watched Lars fiddle with MC Bear Bear’s sunglasses. “I didn’t know you still had him.”

“Hm?” Lars looked up, then back down at the stuffed animal. “Oh, yeah.” He shrugged. “It helps, sometimes. Having something soft to hold. Something that won’t judge you and has really sick sunglasses.” He looked slightly abashed. “Thank you. For giving him to me. You’ve helped me a lot, over the years.”

Steven almost answered immediately, but held off so he could consider his response more carefully instead. “I’ve tried to help you,” he said. “I’ve tried to help a lot of people. For a long time, I thought that was the only thing I was good for. The Gems...they loved me, and they never tried to make me feel that way, but...they did anyway, you know?”

Lars nodded. “So you’ve said.” In recent months, Steven had made more of an effort to open up to his friends and family about the issues he’d been dealing with and the realizations he’d had about himself. It helped him feel less alone.

“But…” Steven sighed. “You didn’t. You never did. You never even asked for my help until we got kidnapped. I just kept trying to give it to you anyway. All the times I tried to help you, those are on me.” He thought for a minute. “And Sadie, sometimes. But mostly me.”

Lars shrugged. “You weren’t entirely wrong about me needing help,” he said. “Although you usually went about it in a really weird way.”

“But I never asked you,” said Steven. “I just did it. And I usually made things worse. And when I possessed you, that was just me taking that kind of thing to its most extreme. I thought I could fix your life, so I literally took it over and tried to make it better. And that _was_ very White Diamond of me.”

“Steven…” Lars sounded worried, but Steven held up a hand.

“No. It was,” he said. “I’m not saying that to make myself feel worse, like I was doing earlier. I’m saying it because it’s true. I know I’m not exactly the same as her. But we do have a couple things in common. And one of them is that we both have a tendency to try to fix things that aren’t any of our business, sometimes to the point of actual mind-control.” He took a deep breath, and looked Lars square in the eye. “But another thing we have in common is that we can both change. And we’re both trying to.”

Lars looked at him thoughtfully for a few long moments, then nodded. “Okay,” he said.

Steven waited for him to say more, but it became apparent that this was all Lars was prepared to give at the moment. So Steven ventured, “Can I ask you something?” Lars gave a vaguely affirmative shrug, so Steven continued, “Why did you never say anything? About it still bothering you?”

Lars’s hands tightened around MC Bear Bear. He sighed and slumped his shoulders. “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I thought it might seem ungrateful.”

Steven quirked his head to the side. “Why would it be ungrateful?”

“You brought me back to life, Steven,” said Lars drily. “I kind of felt like I owed you after that.” He fell back onto the bed, still clutching the toy bear. “I was just a punk kid who was too scared to even show up to a party, and you were literally my life-saver. Who was I to complain if sometimes you came through my head without asking?”

Steven stared at Lars, a great ache pulsing in his chest. “So you smiled and pushed it all down,” he guessed.

Lars nodded. “Yeah,” he said, running a hand through his pale pink hair. “Pretty much.”

Steven almost laughed. To think he’d once possessed Lars to try to make Lars more like him, and now after all this time he’d gotten his wish: a Lars who shoved all his inconvenient, messy, giant-pink-monstrous feelings deep down inside of him and tried to smile away his pain.

“You shouldn’t have to do that,” he said. “Bottling up your feelings isn’t healthy. Trust me. I know.”

“I know you know,” said Lars. “And you’re right. But, I don’t know. I didn’t want to dump this on you. I mean, you’ve clearly got enough to deal with.”

“But this is _my_ mess,” said Steven. “At least in part. Just because I’m going through some stuff doesn’t mean you can’t confront me about the stuff I’ve actually done wrong. That’s not fair to you. And it’s not fair to me, either,” he added. “Coddling me isn’t gonna help me recover.”

Lars twisted his head up to look at Steven. Then he nodded once, decisively. “Okay,” he said. “I won’t coddle you.”

“Good,” said Steven, and fell back onto the bed beside him.

Lars adjusted his position, presumably to get more comfortable. “Just you wait,” he said. “I’m gonna complain all the time now.”

“Good,” said Steven again. “I’m glad.” He paused, then added, “I missed that about you.”

Lars snorted. “If you did, you’re the only one.”

“Maybe,” Steven conceded. A comfortable silence settled over them, and when Steven looked over, Lars was staring up at the ceiling and smiling.

After a few minutes, Steven tentatively said, “I was thinking.”

“Uh oh,” said Lars, mock-meanly.

“When I was in your hair, I was able to talk to you through the tree,” said Steven.

A beat. “Yeah,” said Lars, slowly.

“So what if we did that from now on?” said Steven, and then added for clarification, “Before I come through. I go to the tree first, and I check with you if it’s okay.”

Lars was silent for a few moments. Steven felt suddenly that his initial pitch had been inadequate, so he supplemented it with, “I know I’d still technically be inside your head without your say-so. But you’d have control over whether or not I actually used you as a portal. And you’d always know if I was there. No more wondering if I’m secretly wandering around your head in your sleep.”

A few more moments of silence. Steven forced himself to wait it out. Eventually Lars sat back up, and Steven followed, a little more clumsily.

“That actually sounds like a good idea,” said Lars.

Steven grinned, relieved. “You think?”

“Yeah,” said Lars, and he gave Steven a grin of his own. It was a little more wary, but it was a grin all the same, and Steven was glad to see it. And it grew wider as Lars added, “Who would’ve thought you had it in you?”

Steven laughed. “Lars!” he chided. “Be nice to me, I’m a growing boy.”

“Nope,” said Lars, looking more gleeful by the second. “You said no coddling, so, no coddling. From this day forth, I’ll never be nice to you again. Isn’t that right, MC Bear Bear?” He held up MC Bear Bear next to his face and put on a deep voice that Steven hadn’t known Lars could even access. “That’s right, Lars. You’re gonna be mean to Steven forever.”

“MC Bear Bear doesn’t sound like that!” Steven protested.

“Yes I do,” Lars intoned in his terrible MC Bear Bear voice.

“No he doesn’t!” said Steven. “Give him here, I’ll show you!”

“You’ll have to take him first,” said Lars, snatching the poor misrepresented bear out of Steven’s reach. Steven lunged towards him, but Lars only laughed and dodged, and they spent the rest of Steven's visit chasing each other around the room, arguing about MC Bear Bear the whole while.


	5. Keep Wisconsota Weird

“You like it?” asked Lapis. “I call it _The Crystal Gems_.”

Steven eyed the painting through the screen of his myPad. Despite its title, there was a distinct lack of the three people Steven typically thought of as ‘the Crystal Gems’. It was a beach scene, at night, the sea roiling underneath foreboding clouds. Bismuth was there, waving the original Crystal Gem flag that Steven had given her. Peridot was there as well, in her Steven shirt, hovering on her trash can lid and levitating a television above her. Steven was pleased to see Connie in the painting as well, riding atop Lion and swinging her sword high. In the center was Steven, looking the way he did nowadays but re-enacting a scene from long ago: one hand raised high above his head, clutching Lapis’s gem, and in his other hand, a broken mirror.

“I don’t like drawing myself,” Lapis explained, “so I found a way around it.” Steven had to admit this was a very creative solution to that age-old problem.

“I like it,” he decided, although this was admittedly a foregone conclusion given that he thought all art had value and deserved appreciation, especially when his friends made it. “Can you send me a picture of it?”

“I don’t know how to do that,” said Lapis.

“Well,” said Steven, “you hold your tablet up to the canvas, and you press the little round button at the bottom. Oh, except first you have to click the camera icon. Do you know where that is?”

Lapis blinked at him.

“Um, just ask around Little Homeworld,” said Steven. “Someone will know how to do it.”

“Okay,” said Lapis. “Will do.”

An alarm beeped, and Steven checked his phone. “Oop, sorry,” he said. “It looks like I’ve gotta get going if I want to get to the Cheese Festival on time.”

“That’s okay,” said Lapis. “Take some pictures of cheese for me.”

“Aw, I didn’t know you liked cheese,” said Steven. “That’s great that you’re exploring new things.”

“Oh, I don’t like cheese,” said Lapis. “I just like pictures. They’re very inspiring for my morps.”

“Oh,” said Steven. “Well, that’s great too.”

“Talk to you soon?”

“Yeah,” said Steven. “Soon. And don’t forget to send me that picture!”

“I’ll try,” said Lapis. “Bye Steven.” The FaceTalk call cut out. Lapis was always a bit of a relief to FaceTalk with, because she would hang up on anyone and everyone at the drop of a hat. Steven didn’t like to hang up on people, and unfortunately a lot of his friends and family also seemed to have great reluctance to do so, particularly when they were talking with him. In recent weeks Steven had found himself getting caught in multiple endless loops of him saying goodbye to someone and them saying goodbye to him ad nauseam before someone finally got up the courage to press the ‘end call’ button. It was getting a little old.

Steven put the myPad back in his bag and took out a coat from his suitcase. As he slipped it on, he walked over to the window of the cabin he’d rented for the week. Myriad shades of orange decorated the Wisconsota trees outside.

He’d had a fun few weeks as he had begun to branch out into the midwest. Chicagoland had been an interesting state to visit, although he was pretty sure he didn’t want to live there permanently. Still, Prairie City had been nicer than he’d expected based on all the movies he’d seen about it growing up. And he’d had a really good time exploring the Nice Lakes, which, he felt, were aptly named. The lakes were definitely the highlight of the state of Erie, although Huron City hadn’t been too shabby either. All in all, Steven considered his trip so far a success, at least in the Having Fun department.

His coat successfully zipped up, Steven ducked out of his cabin, hopped in the Dondai, and headed over to the Dairy City 44th Annual Cheese Festival.

The festival lived up to its name. There was indeed a lot of cheese present, and even some people as well, hawking their cheesy wares and lecturing their rapt audiences on the sordid histories of the various cheeses on display. It was the best cheese festival Steven had ever been to.

At one booth, Steven found himself admiring a rather handsome chunk of cheddar. It looked sharp yet not unfriendly, and he said so to the man running the booth.

The man laughed. “Sharp yet not unfriendly is my middle name,” he said.

“Really?” said Steven. “I have a long middle name too.”

The man squinted at him, then shrugged and pulled out a block of gouda from somewhere behind the booth. “Now, if you liked the look of that cheddar, you’re gonna love this gouda,” he said.

“Oh, you’re right,” said Steven, “I do love that gouda.” And he did. It looked very smoky.

“I make it locally,” said the man. “With milk sourced from local cows.”

“Wow,” said Steven. “How do you get them to give you the milk?”

The man stared at Steven, who stared back.

“You don’t know much about cheese, do you,” said the man at last. “You must not be from Wisconsota.”

Steven gave an embarrassed laugh. “You got me,” he said. “I’m from Delmarva.”

The man perked up. “Delmarva? Where in Delmarva?”

Steven ran a hand through the hair on the back of his neck. “Uh, Beach City? It’s on the coast.”

“Beach City!” The man looked thrilled. “Like from the blog!”

Steven blinked. “The blog?”

“You know,” said the man, “Keep Beach City Weird!”

“Oh,” said Steven. “That blog.”

“You’ve heard of it,” said the man triumphantly, wagging a cheese at him.

“I might have,” said Steven, ever-terrible at denial.

“I’m one of its long-time followers,” said the man. “Have you ever met a PSR?”

Steven dug deep into the folder of his brain labeled “Ronaldo’s Weird Theories” for anything called a “PSR” and came up empty. “Is that like a snerson?” he asked.

“No, no, no, a PSR is a polymorphic sentient rock,” said the man, waving dismissively at Steven’s so-behind-the-times snake-person theory. “They call themselves ‘Gems’. They’re from another planet.”

Steven considered how to best answer this question without getting dragged into a game of Recite Your Entire Life And All Your Traumatic Experiences To A Stranger. He settled on, “Uh, yeah, I mean, I might have met one or two.”

“Wow!” said the man. “Have you ever met a Crystal Gem?” He misinterpreted Steven’s deer-in-the-headlights look for one of confusion and elaborated, “The Crystal Gems are a splinter group of rebel PSRs that fight against the totalitarian Great Diamond Authority, which is a group of four high-ranking diamond-type PSRs that want to hollow out the Earth for their own nefarious purposes, except one of them, Pink Diamond, actually split off from the Authority and started the Crystal Gems in the first place in secret, but then faked her death and pretended to be a quartz-type PSR, but then died for real. It’s really quite simple.”

“No kidding,” said Steven, trying to remember when he had actually explained any of that to Ronaldo and eventually concluding that in fact he never had.

“Yes, it’s all very fascinating,” said the man. “I’m surprised you don’t know more about it. You should really read the blog.”

“Maybe I will,” said Steven, and then added before the man could say anything else about Gems, “But enough about me. Tell me more about your various cheeses.”

This briefly sidetracked the man until he came upon a cheese with holes in it “like craters on the moon,” he rhapsodized. “Have you ever been to the moon? There’s a PSR base there.”

Steven debated with himself as to how he should answer this question. On the one hand, telling the truth was of course the right thing to do. If he’d learned anything from his mother’s endless chain of lies, it was that honesty was pretty much always the best policy, even if it caused discomfort in the moment. Lies only led to more lies.

On the other hand, his whole reason for going on this road trip was to get away from Beach City and Gem stuff. Not completely, of course, and not forever; he didn’t want to cut his Gem half, or his family or friends or hometown, out of his life or anything. But he wanted his interactions with that side of himself and his life to be on his terms, as much as they could be. And this conversation was already not entirely on his terms, and he knew that if he were honest about who he was and what he had experienced, he would probably lose whatever small control he did have over the conversation altogether.

So he said, “No. I’ve never been to the moon. It sounds fun, though, maybe I’ll check it out,” and this satisfied the man’s curiosity enough that Steven was able to divert his attention to another of his cheeses, a rather gorgeous mozzarella.

As the man waxed poetic about this admittedly delightful mozzarella’s backstory, Steven tried to figure out how to politely exit the conversation. He had been working with his therapist on setting boundaries without being outright rude or aggressive, but it was difficult for him. He’d spent so long trying to make everyone else happy that it was more or less second nature by now, and only when he was aggravated did he find himself able to stand up for what he needed. Which was an improvement from not being able to do it at all, but it also often meant that ‘setting boundaries’, in practice, meant ‘blowing up at someone’, which really wasn’t productive or healthy.

With his friends and family, he’d begun to practice simply saying what he needed flat-out, often blurting it out in the middle of a conversation after a long internal debate, which usually was quite awkward, but they knew his situation and didn’t judge him for it. (He hoped.) Would that be okay to do with a stranger, though? He didn’t know. He used to be so good at talking to strangers: strange townspeople, strange Gems, strange Big Donut employees. But even with the road-tripping he’d done so far, he still felt wildly out of practice and adrift at sea.

Finally he just said, while the man was in the middle of describing the process of turning milk into cheese, “I need to leave this conversation.”

The man blinked. Steven held his breath.

Then the man shrugged. “Okay,” he said. “Do you want to buy a cheese for the road?”

“No thank you,” said Steven. “I’m just looking around today.”

“Well, I’ll be here all week,” said the man, and returned to his cheeses.

Steven exhaled and stepped away from the booth. That hadn’t been nearly as bad as he’d thought. Awkward, sure, but not bad. And yes, now the man probably thought he was weird, but so what? He regularly read a blog all about how great it was that Beach City was weird. How could he complain if he met a guy from Beach City who was weird? That should be expected, really. It would be weird if Steven weren’t weird, in fact.

Comforted by this thought, Steven moved on to the rest of the booths at the festival. There was a surprisingly wide variety of vendors and cheeses available, and some of the booths even had fun names like “Say Cheese” and “Cheese Louise” and “Cheesy as Pie”. He bought a block of cheddar from a stall named “Cheddar Is Better”, which was the kind of value judgment Steven generally didn’t approve of, but in this case he had to admit there was some merit to it.

On his way out of the festival, he made sure to casually walk past the Beach City aficionado’s booth to see if he could spot what it was called, since he’d neglected to check earlier. A quick glance confirmed it was called “Keep Wisconsota Weird (With Cheesy Joe)”, which just about summed it all up, really.

Steven took a discreet picture with his phone and sent it to Ronaldo and, after a moment’s thought, Lapis. Then he pocketed his phone, went back to his cabin, and ate his cheddar. Outside his window, orange leaves fluttered in the breeze.


	6. St. Gabe's Valley

Steven squinted at the menu and said, “Okay, so when it says the enchiladas come with ‘red sauce’, what does that mean, exactly?”

The waiter shrugged. “It’s, you know, red sauce.”

Steven scratched his head. “Like tomato sauce?” he asked, baffled.

“No,” said the waiter, as if this were a very silly thing to ask. “It’s not tomato sauce. It’s red sauce.”

“Okay,” said Steven. “So what is it made of?”

“Mostly tomatoes,” said the waiter. Steven stared. The waiter stared unblinkingly back.

Steven sighed and acquiesced. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll have the cheese enchiladas, please.” The waiter nodded and grabbed his menu before heading off.

Steven took a sip of his lemonade. This was definitely the weirdest Aquamexican restaurant he’d been to, which was odd, because he had thought southern Cali would be an Aquamexican food hub or something.

He’d been in Cali for a couple weeks already, slowly making his way down south, and now he was in an area of the southern part of the state known as St. Gabe’s Valley, on his way to the capital city of West Covina. He was excited to get there, had spent the last hour or so eyeing the brochure he’d picked up in Angel City this morning that proudly bore the town slogan: “Live, Work, Play.” It was quite a delightful town slogan, he thought. Living, working, and playing were exactly the kinds of things he wanted to do with his life. It must be a delightful little city, to have such a delightful motto.

Upon completion of his tour of the midwest and northwest, he’d come to the conclusion that it wasn’t really the place for him, not permanently anyway. He’d had fun exploring it, of course, that much was true. He’d toured the cornfields of rural Hawkeye and the art museums of Hawkeye City. In Braska he’d observed further cornfields and walked the paths of the famous Corn City Rock Gardens. He’d gone fishing in Peace Garden, East Dakota (catch and release, of course), and then headed west to explore the state’s national forests before crossing into West Dakota. He’d spent a few nights in the Billings area and then had driven out to the part of the state dominated by glaciers, which he’d only ever seen in nature documentaries before. He’d been sprayed by the geysers of Orange Rock National Park outside Big City, East Ida. He’d stopped by Gemstone City for a day before the name got to him and he headed for the more mountainous parts of Ida to go horseback riding. He’d waded the ever-rainy streets of Olympic City and hiked along the volcanic mountain range that ran through the state of Washing. He’d braved the craters and coffee shops of Beaver City, Pacifica. It had been a series of truly great experiences, and he was glad he’d had them, but it wasn’t what he needed long-term.

But maybe “Live, Work, Play” was.

His enchiladas eventually came, and with them came the realization that he did not, in fact, like red sauce, whatever it was. But enchiladas were enchiladas, so he ate them up, paid the bill, and got back on the I-10.

It was winter now, although it seemed that southern Cali had not really gotten the message and Steven was finding that even his pink letterman jacket was a little too warm for the weather here. Still, it comforted him to wear it, so he kept it on when he wasn’t in the direct sun. He was wearing it now, as he drove along the freeway and tapped out a rhythm on the steering wheel with his fingers and, whoops, accidentally took the wrong exit and ended up on a completely different freeway.

Well, that was no problem. Boogle Maps was recalculating already. And really, what was wrong with a little extra exploring? Wasn’t that the whole point of this road trip? To try new things? To adventure beyond where he’d been? To experience the unexpected? To relish it, in fact? To roll around in it like a dog rolling in fallen autumn leaves which, coincidentally, southern Cali didn’t really seem to have?

Pleased with this reframing of his current situation, Steven took the wrong exit again, but deliberately this time, just to see what was out there.

He merged onto a street in the middle of a very lovely-looking city, with green gardens in the shadows of sprawling palm trees and stone buildings that looked older and warmer than a lot of the other buildings he’d seen in St. Gabe’s Valley so far. It was quite a nice town he’d ended up in, and he was grateful he’d decided to take that exit. Otherwise he might never have even known about -- what was the name of this town, anyway?

He was about to look it up on Boogle Maps, but realized he didn’t need to -- there were signs on every street corner loaded with information about what each street contained, and as he drove by the next one, he looked up at the top of one such sign.

And nearly crashed the Dondai.

There at the top of the sign was the city’s name, all right, proudly displayed next to the city’s logo, and he couldn’t decide which was more alarming: _Rose City,_ or the stylized, blocky, red red red rose next to it.

Steven pulled off to the side of the road, forgetting to signal and thus eliciting a honk from an irate driver behind him. He couldn’t stay here forever -- it wasn’t even a parking space, there didn’t seem to be any available on this street -- but he needed to catch his breath.

It took a few moments, but he was able to calm himself down a little bit from his initial panic reaction. It was just a name, just a flower. Nothing to do with his mom whatsoever. He wore a pink jacket all the time, and “Pink” was also her name, right? So what was the problem? It was just the name of the town. It’s not as if people were going to be walking around with roses on their shirts or anything.

“You’re right, Steven,” he said to himself as he hit the signal and prepared to pull out of the not-really-a-parking-space. “It’ll all be fine.”

And it was. For a few minutes. Then Steven’s hands started to sweat. He kept trying to avoid looking at those street corner signs, but he kept being drawn back to them, back to that city logo, that rose that could easily have been a Crystal Gem symbol in another universe.

He willed himself to focus and tried to pay extra attention to all the other signs he saw, so that he wouldn’t have time to look at the ones on the street corners. _Old Town Historical Museum. Cactus Gardens, 3 miles. This way to the Rose Arena._

Steven blinked. Shook his head. Felt the sweat on his palms. Looked back at the road in front of him. Tried to focus on the signs.

_Rose City Children’s Museum. Rose Canyon, 6.5 miles. Roseway Bicycle Route begins here._

Steven bit his lip. Tightened his grip on the steering wheel. Considered turning on the radio. Decided against it. Kept his eyes on the road. On the signs.

_Rose Parade this week!!! Bring the whole family!_

Steven swerved off the road he’d been driving on at the next turn, barely remembering to signal this time and thus getting honked at again by more irate drivers. He was probably making a very bad impression on the nice people of this city, he thought in the back of his mind, but the thought hardly registered with the rest of him.

He drove and drove and drove, turning at random and resolving to not look at any more street signs than was strictly necessary, and eventually ended up on a winding road that led to a half-full parking lot. He pulled in, rolled the window down to let in a little air, parked, closed his eyes, and let his head fall with a thump onto the steering wheel, feeling his jaw clench with anger at himself.

What was wrong with him? Why was he having such a hard time with this? He could have a conversation with an actual Rose Quartz who was the spitting image of his mother (or, well, vice versa, anyway), but he couldn’t even drive around a city that just happened to really be into roses? What kind of sense did that make?

Tears started to spring from his eyes, and he felt sick and small and embarrassed by them. What was he even crying over? Why was he even upset? But the tears came anyway, heedless of all the reasons why they shouldn’t, and by the time they had gone and dried and Steven opened his eyes again, it was evening, and Steven realized he’d fallen asleep.

He blinked to rid his eyes of that awful post-crying feeling and opened the car door. Night was settling onto the now-empty parking lot like a blanket. Steven checked his phone: 8:03 PM. He sighed. No “Live, Work, Play” for him today, then.

He leaned against his car and looked around the parking lot for some sort of clue as to where he was. He found it in a banner strapped to a pole at one end of the lot, and almost laughed, because of course, where else could he be but Rose Arena Parking Lot C.

Steven took a deep breath, in and out. He’d calmed down, at least, which was good, no longer felt surrounded on all sides. He gazed up at the sky, hoping to see the stars and be comforted by them, but this was southern Cali and so there were maybe two stars visible at most, despite the ever-clear skies.

Steven looked back down at his phone and scrolled through his contact list. He clicked on a name, but waited to press call until he'd clambered up onto the roof of his car and lain back so that he could see the two lonely stars, shining brighter than the Angel City lights despite all the odds.

The phone rang, once, twice, and then was answered. “Steven?”

Steven closed his eyes.

“Hi Bismuth,” he said.

“How’re you doing?” asked Bismuth. “Pearl said you’re in Cali now. That’s way out west, right?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Other side of the country.”

“Wow,” said Bismuth with a little laugh. “That’s pretty far.”

“Yeah,” he said.

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Uh, Steven? You okay?”

Instead of answering, Steven said, “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” said Bismuth easily.

Steven opened his eyes again, and stared back up at the two stars in the sky. For a second he thought maybe he could spot a third, straining to be seen through the haze.

Steven said, “Can you tell me about my mom?”


	7. Left Rear Tire

It was late in the afternoon when Steven pulled over to the side of the road. Ahead of him, the road stretched out into the endless desert of Zona.

He knew he was cutting it close with Garnet’s warning about his left rear tire, but he hadn’t fully hit the deepest part of the desert yet and besides, it seemed to be doing okay so far. He would’ve gotten to it sooner, but every day he’d found something new and strange about the southwest to explore. After Cali, he’d driven over to Carson, where he’d spent one of the weirdest weeks in his life (which was saying something) in La Vega. Then he’d driven down to Zona and spent a few days in Canyon City before heading out in the direction of the Pretty Great Canyon. He had at least a day’s drive left before he got there and he was excited to see what it was really like.

Steven examined his left rear tire and found, to his dismay, that there was actually a tiny hole in it. He pulled out his phone to check where the nearest auto repair shop was. No service. He groaned. He’d just have to risk it and keep driving until he got somewhere with service, he supposed. If only he could fix tires himself.

...Wait.

...No, he shouldn’t.

...It would probably work, though. And he really didn’t know when he’d get service again.

...Well, desperate times called for desperate measures, Steven decided, and licked a finger and rubbed it on the tire.

The tire glowed pink and the hole patched itself up. Steven exhaled with relief. Then the tire, still glowing pink, expanded and warped its shape until it popped out a Steven-shaped rubber head on one side and four little stubby limbs spaced out around its circumference.

“Aaa!” said Steven, falling back onto the ground.

“Aaa!” said his left rear tire.

Steven slapped his forehead and groaned. “Oh, no, I did it again!”

“Did it again,” his left rear tire echoed.

Steven sighed and picked himself up, wiping dust off of his pants. “I guess I can’t keep you attached to the wheel forever,” he said.

“Can’t keep you attached to the wheel forever.”

“I know, I know,” he muttered, and went to work detaching his left rear tire from its place around the wheel. It was difficult, especially since he’d never done it before with a regular tire and certainly hadn’t done it with a sapient Steven-shaped tire, but he eventually wrestled it off the wheel and placed it feet-down on the ground.

“There you go,” said Steven.

“There you go,” repeated his left rear tire.

Steven scratched his head. “I guess I should give you a name, huh?”

“A name, huh?” said his left rear tire, scratching its Steven-shaped head.

Steven thought for a minute. “How about...Left Rear Tire Steven?”

“Left Rear Tire Steven,” his left rear tire said happily, and so Left Rear Tire Steven it was.

Steven turned back to the Dondai. Left Rear Tire Steven turned with him. The left rear wheel looked sad and lonely without its tire.

“We’re definitely gonna need to get a new tire now,” Steven said. He checked his phone again, just in case. Still no service. He eyed the road ahead of him and behind him and grimaced. No way were they going to be able to walk to the nearest auto shop.

“Okay, Left Rear Tire Steven, hold on,” said Steven, and he grabbed Left Rear Tire Steven and flew up into the air.

“Hold on,” said Left Rear Tire Steven.

“I will,” said Steven. He flew back the way he’d come down the road, since he had no idea what lay up ahead in the other direction. At last he spotted a tire repair shop from up above, and he gently floated down with Left Rear Tire Steven until they were both safely planted on the ground.

Steven led Left Rear Tire Steven to the entrance of Jason’s Tire Shop, but paused before they could go in. “Um...you should probably stay here,” he told Left Rear Tire Steven.

“Stay here,” said Left Rear Tire Steven.

“Right. Got it in one,” said Steven, and went inside.

There weren’t any other customers, thankfully, so he went right up to the person he presumed was Jason, or at least a disciple thereof. “Hi,” he said, “I’m hoping to buy a new tire for my Dondai.”

“Sure,” said maybe-Jason. “What model?”

Steven blinked. “Um,” he said, “a Dondai?”

Possibly-Jason squinted at him, then shrugged and smiled. “Why don’t we take a look at your car and we’ll see what we can do.”

“Oh, no, my car’s not here,” said Steven. “It’s way out in the desert.” At perhaps-Jason’s confused look, he added, “Um, I hitchhiked?”

“Okay,” said Jason-or-not-Jason-that-was-the-question. “Well, I can show you the tires that tend to fit Dondais the best.”

“That sounds good,” said Steven.

Could-be-Jason led Steven over to a section of the tire store and pointed out a row of tires. “These all generally go well with Dondais.”

“Hm, yes, I see,” said Steven, who did not.

“It would help if we knew the exact model of your car, of course,” said I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-Jason. “For size accuracy.”

“Right,” said Steven, nodding sagely. He pointed at a tire at random. “But, you know, I think that one looks pretty good.”

Perchance-Jason lifted the tire Steven had chosen from its spot on the wall and handed it over to him. “Are you sure? You want to make sure it fits right.”

Steven paused. This was a good point. Although he wanted to get out of here as quickly as possible so as not to betray how little he truly knew about cars, it wouldn’t do if he got the completely wrong size and had to come back later. He studied the tire more closely, lifting it a few times to test its weight in his hands, and eventually nodded to himself, satisfied. It looked similar enough to Left Rear Tire Steven, only without the Steven-ness, and he figured that was as good a metric as any.

“Yes,” he said, “I’ll take that one.”

“Take that one!” crowed a voice behind him, and Steven whipped around to see Left Rear Tire Steven, who had picked up a tire from a separate display and was lifting it up and down as Steven had done with his.

Steven risked a glance at might-be-Jason, who was looking on in vague horror. “I guess we’ll take that one too?” Steven said nervously. “Just in case?”

In short order, Steven and Left Rear Tire Steven, now two tires heavier and two tires poorer, were ushered out of Jason’s Tire Shop by a very frightened Schrödinger’s Jason, who thanked them profusely for their patronage and asked them politely to never ever come back.

Once outside, Steven rounded on Left Rear Tire Steven. “Why couldn’t you just stay here, huh?” he snapped.

“Why couldn’t you just stay here, huh?” Left Rear Tire Steven snapped back.

Steven flinched. Then he sighed, because he shouldn’t have been surprised. Left Rear Tire Steven was copying him. He knew this. What Steven did, Left Rear Tire Steven did. That included going into tire shops, and it included getting angry. As its creator and sole role model, Steven had a responsibility to Left Rear Tire Steven. He had to do right by Left Rear Tire Steven, the way he’d failed to do for Cactus Steven.

“I’m sorry,” said Steven. “You’re right. I left you, and you followed me, because you didn’t know what else to do. I shouldn’t have yelled.”

“Shouldn’t have yelled,” said Left Rear Tire Steven, and Steven couldn’t quite discern whether it was an apology or a chastisement.

“Let’s go back to the car, okay?” said Steven, clutching the tire he’d just bought.

Left Rear Tire Steven clutched its own new tire. “Go back to the car,” it said, and Steven took them there.

With some difficulty and a little help from Left Rear Tire Steven, Steven was able to get his new left rear tire fitted onto the wheel. Actually, the tire he’d selected didn’t quite fit, but the one Left Rear Tire Steven had picked up ended up working out just fine. Life was funny like that, Steven mused to himself as he buckled Left Rear Tire Steven into the passenger seat.

Steven got behind the wheel and said to his new passenger, “I think we’ll stop at the first hotel we find. How’s that?”

“Can’t keep you attached to the wheel forever,” said Left Rear Tire Steven.

Steven beamed at him. “Exactly!” he said. “I need to sleep. I knew you’d get it, Left Rear Tire Steven.”

“I knew you’d get it,” said Left Rear Tire Steven, and off they went across the desert.

It was night by the time they found a hotel. Steven checked in alone and then carried Left Rear Tire Steven in under one arm, his overnight bag under the other. He gave what he hoped was a convincingly normal grin to the hotel clerk as he passed by on the way to the elevator.

Once they were in their room, Steven sat Left Rear Tire Steven down on one of the beds and fluffed up a pillow for him.

“This is where you put your head,” he told Left Rear Tire Steven, putting the pillow back down.

Left Rear Tire Steven got up and went over to Steven’s bed. It fluffed up Steven’s pillow and put it back down. “This is where you put your head,” it said.

Steven grinned. “Hey, you’re really getting the hang of this, Left Rear Tire Steven!” he said. “This is going so much better than Cactus Steven did.”

“Better than Cactus Steven,” Left Rear Tire Steven repeated.

Steven held up a hand and shook his head. “No -- I’m not saying  _ you’re _ better -- I’m saying  _ I’m _ better than I was when I created Cactus Steven.”

Left Rear Tire Steven mimicked Steven, holding up a stubby hand of its own and shaking its own hand. “You’re better.”

“Right,” said Steven.

“I’m better than I was,” Left Rear Tire Steven tried out.

Steven considered this. “I hope so,” he said at last. “C’mon. Time for bed.”

He eventually coaxed Left Rear Tire Steven into lying down on one of the beds, although he couldn’t explain sleep sufficiently well to convince his round rubber doppelganger to actually try it out. But he got some shut-eye of his own, and at least Left Rear Tire Steven got to experience lying down in a bed, which was probably quite a new thing for a tire.

In the morning Steven piled both of them back into the Dondai and drove off further into the Zona desert. It was a little cooler here than it had been in Cali, although Steven felt it was still unreasonably warm for wintertime, and the breeze fluffed up his hair through the open car window. He had the radio playing, to Left Rear Tire Steven’s quiet bemusement, and he would crank it up whenever a song he knew came on, like just now.

“You can’t hold me now,” Steven sang softly, “only I can do that.”

He looked over at Left Rear Tire Steven, who was looking back at him curiously. “C’mon,” said Steven, “sing along!” He turned the dial up even higher. Left Rear Tire Steven watched him, but didn’t respond until Emily King, ft. Steven, had crooned out the rest of the song and the radio had shifted into advertisement mode.

“Can’t hold me now,” Left Rear Tire Steven said with some wonderment, rubber eyes still on the radio dial.

“That’s right,” said Steven.

“Only I can do that.”

“That’s right,” said Steven again, and not for the first time wished he knew exactly what it was that Left Rear Tire Steven was thinking.

Left Rear Tire Steven turned its head slightly, as if to look out the passenger side window. Steven glanced out his own window and saw nothing but red desert all around.

“I think we’re gonna try to make it all the way to the Pretty Great Canyon today,” said Steven. “What do you think about that, Left Rear Tire Steven?”

“That’s right,” said Left Rear Tire Steven.

“It’s a plan, then,” said Steven, and he turned the radio down as a particularly loud song came on.

They did make it to the Pretty Great Canyon eventually, although it was starting to get dark by the time they got there. Steven figured it would be best to wait to descend into the canyon until the next day, so for now he took Left Rear Tire Steven to an overlook point.

“What do you think?” he asked Left Rear Tire Steven. The canyon was deep and old and sharp in unexpected places, a jagged scar in the flat Zona landscape that stretched on for miles into the distance. It was one of the strangest and biggest and most beautiful things Steven had ever seen. “Pretty great, right?”

“Pretty great,” said Left Rear Tire Steven, and they watched the sun set over the canyon together.


	8. Balloons

Steven woke up to eighteen missed calls and three voicemails, all from the Diamonds.

Five calls were from White:  _ “Steee-ven~! You’ll never believe it! Spinel and I have come up with our own comedy routine and we’re about to go on tour across the galaxy! Oh, you just HAVE to come visit and see us in action!” _

A dozen calls were from Blue, who did nothing by halves:  _ “Steven! Great news! White has been making such incredible progress. She and Spinel have just the funniest new little routine. You really should come see it, you’re going to love it!” _

And one call was from Yellow:  _ “Steven. White has put together a dreadful new comedy routine and she will not hesitate to inflict it on you if she gets the chance. Do NOT take her calls.” _

Steven elected to pretend he’d heard Yellow’s message first, and didn’t call White Diamond back.

He’d made it to Balloon City last night, and he was excited to venture out into town today. He and Left Rear Tire Steven had successfully hiked to the bottom of the Pretty Great Canyon back in Zona, and then upon resurfacing had driven north to Salt Lake, where they’d visited multiple national parks, experienced strange religious undertones in Utah City, and slithered through slot canyons that had reminded Steven a little too much of the Beta Kindergarten. Then they’d headed over to Red River, where they’d rented a log cabin outside Centennial City and spent a good amount of time exploring Bumpy Mountain National Park before driving back down south. In a couple weeks Steven was going to meet up with Connie for a weekend in Lone Star City, Second Aquamexico, which he was looking forward to, but for now he wanted to make the most of his time in Newer Better More Enchanting Second Aquamexico.

Steven and Left Rear Tire Steven rolled out of the hotel and piled into the Dondai and then they were off, driving along the streets of Balloon City. The weather was actually rather cold here, which was a welcome relief for Steven, who was from the good old East Coast where winters were cold and you knew where you stood. The sky was a bold bright blue, with the occasional puffy white cloud, and the crest of the Watermelon Mountains loomed over the city from the east.

They drove for some time searching for any sign that might lead them to the eponymous balloons, but couldn’t seem to find anything. Eventually Steven was forced to flag down a pedestrian, who was wearing a shirt with the state flag on it, which seemed to be the cool thing to do if you lived in Newer Better More Enchanting Second Aquamexico. Maybe it was a way to signal that you were definitely from around here and not, say, from Second Aquamexico, which was obviously inferior judging by the name.

“Hi,” said Steven to State Flag. “Can you tell me where the balloons are?”

State Flag squinted at him, then at Left Rear Tire Steven, then did a double-take and squinted at Left Rear Tire Steven again, then shrugged and squinted back at Steven. “Balloons?”

“Yes,” said Steven. “Um, the famous Balloon City balloons?”

“Balloons,” said Left Rear Tire Steven happily.

State Flag blinked, then laughed. “Oh, you mean the Great Big Balloon Party? That’s in October.”

“Oh,” said Steven. He scratched his head. “Are there any year-round balloons?”

State Flag shrugged. “Probably. I don’t know.”

“Oh, okay,” said Steven. “Uh, do you by any chance know of any other cool stuff to do around here?”

State Flag thought for a minute, then gestured in the opposite direction of the Watermelons. “Well, if you go a few miles out west, you can see where they shot parts of  _ Baking Bread _ .”

“ _ Baking Bread _ ?” Steven repeated.

“Baking bread,” Left Rear Tire Steven echoed beside him.

State Flag’s eyes went wide. “You don’t know  _ Baking Bread _ ?”

“No,” said Steven. “I mean, I’ve baked bread before, but, I didn’t know there was a whole show about it. Is it, like, a cooking show?”

“No, no, no,” said State Flag excitedly. “It’s like the best show ever. I really don’t know how you’ve never heard of it. See, it’s about this guy on the wrong side of the law who gets diagnosed with a terminal illness and decides to give up his life of crime to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a baker, only his past keeps threatening to catch up to him and sour his dough before he can even get it startered!”

“Wow!” said Steven. “That does sound good.”

“You really should watch it,” said State Flag.

“I’ll put it on my list,” Steven promised.

“Baking bread,” said Left Rear Tire Steven. “On my list.”

“Exactly,” said Steven.

State Flag glanced between them, a bit puzzled, but shrugged and said, “You need anything else?”

“No, I think I’m good,” said Steven. “Thanks for your help.”

“No prob,” said State Flag. “And, uh, cool interactive art installation you got there.”

Steven tilted his head to the side, confused. Then his eyes widened in realization. “Oh, you mean Left Rear Tire Steven?” he said. “No, that’s, um, my child? Kind of? I brought my left rear tire to life. It’s a long story.”

State Flag nodded slowly and uncomprehendingly. “Okay, well, good luck with that.”

“Thanks,” said Steven. “You too.” Which, upon reflection, was a nonsensical thing to say, but it felt right in the moment. And on that (no doubt perplexing) note, Steven drove off, and watched as State Flag, patron saint of definitely not being from Second Aquamexico, grew smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror.

All that talk of bread had made Steven hungry, so he turned to Left Rear Tire Steven and said, “What do you think? You wanna get something to eat?”

“Baking bread,” said Left Rear Tire Steven, having apparently found a new favorite phrase.

“My thoughts precisely, Left Rear Tire Steven,” said Steven. He pulled over to the side of the road and Boogled “best cafes near me”, and ultimately decided to try a place called the Shooting Star.

Once there, he ordered a green chile cheeseburger and a slice of strawberry rhubarb pie for himself, and some bread for Left Rear Tire Steven (for observational and educational purposes).

Left Rear Tire Steven poked at the bread with its stubby rubber hand. “Bread,” it identified.

“Right,” said Steven in a somewhat strangled voice as his throat tried to fight off the heat of the chile. “That’s bread.”

Left Rear Tire Steven considered this. “On my list,” it eventually concluded, a statement Steven couldn’t hope to decipher but thought might be a vague kind of approval.

Halfway through their meal Steven’s phone rang. He checked the screen and sighed. White Diamond again. He didn’t especially want to answer, but he hated to hang up on people, so he let it go to voicemail in the hope that she wouldn’t call again, and turned his phone to vibrate just in case she did.

She did, of course, a couple more times, and then Blue started calling him. Possibly, he considered, White had enlisted her to call him on her behalf. Or maybe she just missed him. You never quite knew, with Blue. Yellow didn’t call him, apparently having said all she felt she needed to say. Steven watched morosely as the calls from Blue rolled in, thanking his lucky stars that he’d never given Spinel his phone number.

Steven looked over at Left Rear Tire Steven only to discover that Left Rear Tire Steven was watching the vibrating phone with great intensity.

“It’s Blue,” said Steven. He checked the screen. “Oh, no, wait, it’s actually White again. They’re calling about some comedy thing, I guess? I don’t know.”

“I don’t know,” Left Rear Tire Steven said, turning the words around thoughtfully in its little rubber mouth.

“Yeah,” said Steven. “Me neither.” He slumped over and stared at the phone. Logically he knew that the easiest way to get them off his back would be to accept White’s call and simply tell her he wasn’t coming to her show and she should stop pestering him about it. White wasn’t always good at intuiting when to back off, but if you clearly set a boundary with her, you could generally trust her to abide by it. The problem with that plan was that it involved talking to White, who was the hardest Diamond to talk to and whose voice still sent a little shiver down Steven’s spine even now, when she was genuinely trying to be friendly.

The phone stopped vibrating. Steven took a bite of his cheeseburger in the blissful silence. The phone vibrated again.

“White again,” said Left Rear Tire Steven, and indeed it was.

Steven put his chin in his hands. Across the table, Left Rear Tire Steven did the same.  If only there were some way to talk to White Diamond without actually talking to her. Well, voicemail, he supposed, but that would require White to not pick up the phone. And if she saw it was Steven, she was pretty much guaranteed to answer it.

“They’re calling about some comedy thing,” said Left Rear Tire Steven.

“Yeah,” said Steven absent-mindedly, and then, “Wait.” He fixed Left Rear Tire Steven with a sudden look. “I’ve got it!”

“Got it,” said Left Rear Tire Steven, a little quizzically but not enough to be a proper question.

“You can answer for me!” said Steven. He pushed the phone towards Left Rear Tire Steven. “All you have to do is repeat what I tell you to say. It’s brilliant!”

“Brilliant,” said Left Rear Tire Steven, not without some dubiousness.

“Okay, let’s see, what should I have you say?” said Steven. He rubbed his chin in thought, as if stroking his nonexistent beard. “How about you say this: ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t come to your comedy show.’ That’s good, right?” He frowned. “Should I take the apology out? My therapist says I should think carefully about apologizing and whether or not it’s truly necessary when I have the urge to do it. But, I mean, she will be kinda bummed that I’m not coming, so, maybe the apology will soften the blow, so to speak. What do you think?”

Left Rear Tire Steven blinked at him rubberishly. “I don’t know,” it said, which Steven supposed was a fair enough answer.

“I’ll leave it in,” Steven decided. The phone stopped vibrating. “Okay, so, the next time she calls, I’m gonna click answer, and then you say: ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t come to your comedy show.’ No, wait, lead with a greeting. So: ‘Hi White Diamond, I’m sorry but I can’t come to your comedy show.’ Yeah, that’s good.”

“That’s good.”

“Right,” said Steven. The phone started vibrating again. Steven paused before answering it. “Let’s practice it, okay? I hit answer, and you say?”

“Hi White Diamond, I’m sorry but I can’t come to your comedy show,” said Left Rear Tire Steven. “Yeah, that’s good.”

“Um, don’t say the ‘Yeah, that’s good’ part,” said Steven. “But otherwise, great job! Here goes nothing.” He hit answer and put the phone on speaker.

“Steven!” White Diamond trilled through the phone, as delighted as if Steven had picked up on the first ring.

“That’s your cue,” Steven whispered out of the side of his mouth.

“Hi White Diamond, I’m sorry but I can’t come to your comedy show,” said Left Rear Tire Steven, whose perfect delivery earned a grin and thumbs-up from Original Flavor Steven.

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Steven? Is that you?” asked White Diamond. “You sound different. Not that there’s anything wrong with sounding different,” she quickly amended. “Is everything okay? Oh, are you having another dreadful Earth catastrophe? Are you corrupting again?”

Steven grimaced and tried to gesture at Left Rear Tire Steven to deny everything. Left Rear Tire Steven just said, “Okay.”

“Oh, good,” said White Diamond, and then sighed dramatically. “It’s too bad you can’t make it, though. Are you sure you can’t squeeze it into your schedule? We’re planning multiple performances on a wide variety of planets, and we’ve had such rave reviews so far! Even Yellow liked it,” she added, which would’ve been much more convincing if Steven hadn’t gotten a phone call to the exact opposite effect last night.

Left Rear Tire Steven looked a bit like a deer in the headlights, or at least as much as any left rear tire could. “Can’t come,” it managed to get out.

“Oh, all right then,” said White Diamond airily. “We’ll just have to tell you about it later. Say, how’s your little therapy road trip going? Are you -- ” She seemed to be fishing around for the appropriate question to ask, and settled on, “Are you growing as a lifeform?”

Left Rear Tire Steven looked at the phone. Then it looked at its bread. Then it looked back at the phone. “Baking bread,” it said, in lieu of a better answer.

“Oh,  _ Baking Bread _ !” White Diamond exclaimed. “I love that show! You’ve been watching it too? Have you gotten to the part where -- ”

“No spoilers!” Steven almost shouted, and hung up, because that was as good an excuse as any to do so.

Once the call was over, he exhaled, and Left Rear Tire Steven copied the movement, albeit sans the actual working of the lungs.

“I think that went about as well as it could’ve,” said Steven. “Thanks, Left Rear Tire Steven.”

“Balloons,” said Left Rear Tire Steven.

“I wish,” said Steven. “I guess we’ll have to come back in October, huh?”

Left Rear Tire Steven shook its head. “Balloons,” it said, looking pointedly out the window. Steven followed its gaze. He had to crane his neck, but eventually he spotted a place across the street called “Watermelon Balloons: Year-Round Balloon Rides!!!”, which made him smile, because Steven had always held that the more exclamation points the better.

“You’re right, buddy,” said Steven. “That place does have balloons. We’ll check it out after lunch, okay?”

Left Rear Tire Steven nodded. “Bread,” it said knowingly, tapping its own plate.

Steven finished up his green chile cheeseburger, which was good, and his strawberry rhubarb pie, which was perhaps the most excellent pie he’d ever had and was quite a persuasive argument that this state truly was newer, better, and more enchanting. Then he and Left Rear Tire Steven left the Shooting Star and headed over to Watermelon Balloons.

Steven paid for an hour-long balloon ride, and after some preparations, he and Left Rear Tire Steven and the hot air balloon operator were aloft. The view was grand, the sky was blue, the wind was cold, and the Watermelon Mountains reared up out of the ground to greet the aeronauts like an old friend. Steven waved at the mountains on impulse, and Left Rear Tire Steven did as well, and then the hot air balloon operator did too, presumably just to avoid feeling left out.

When they landed, Steven got ready to leave, but Left Rear Tire Steven didn’t, instead staring at the company’s display of currently-deflated hot air balloons and proclaiming in wonder, “Balloons.”

“Yup,” said the hot air balloon operator, “those are balloons, all right.” It was clear that the employees of Watermelon Balloons didn’t really know what to make of Left Rear Tire Steven, but Steven admired them for trying.

“C’mon, Left Rear Tire Steven,” said Steven, “let’s head out.”

But Left Rear Tire Steven shook its head. “Can’t hold me now,” it reminded him.

Steven tilted his head to the side. “You don’t wanna come?”

“Balloons,” said Left Rear Tire Steven in explanation, and Steven understood.

He turned to the hot air balloon operator. “Do you guys have any job openings?”

The hot air balloon operator shrugged. “We could always use new people. Not many hot air balloon pilots around these days, even in Balloon City.”

“Well, I think Left Rear Tire Steven really wants a job here,” said Steven. He looked to Left Rear Tire Steven for confirmation, and got a nod in return.

“Really wants a job,” it said emphatically.

The hot air balloon operator blinked, then turned hesitantly to face Left Rear Tire Steven. “Do you, uh, know anything about piloting hot air balloons?”

“Don’t worry,” said Steven. “Left Rear Tire Steven’s a fast learner.”

“Fast learner,” said Left Rear Tire Steven, as if to prove Steven’s point.

The hot air balloon operator shrugged again, then held out a hand. “Then I guess I should say welcome to the team, Left Rear Tire Steven.”

Left Rear Tire Steven gently grasped the hot air balloon operator’s hand. “Balloons.”

“Uh, right,” said the hot air balloon operator.

Steven smiled. “Well, then,” he said, “I guess this is where we part ways.”

Left Rear Tire Steven nodded. “Part ways,” it said.

Steven opened his arms for a hug, and Left Rear Tire Steven obliged. “I’ll come back and visit,” said Steven. “You guys are part of the Great Big Balloon Party, right?”

“Of course,” said the hot air balloon operator.

“Then I’ll see you in October,” said Steven.

“See you in October,” said his former left rear tire.

As Steven left, he turned back one last time, to see the hot air balloon operator engaged in deep conversation with the newest employee of Watermelon Balloons.

“Baking bread,” Left Rear Tire Steven was saying.

“Oh,  _ Baking Bread _ ?” said the hot air balloon operator. “I love that show.”

Steven smiled, and shook his head, and kept walking.


	9. Chubby Monday

Steven steepled his fingers under his chin, staring at the Boogle Doc on his screen, and tried to imagine the next chapter in the life of Magpie Jones.

He and Connie had gotten up to seven chapters so far of their co-written story (working title: _After the Unkindness_ ). The central character was Magpie Jones, a young teenager who, two years prior to the start of the story, had been instrumental in ending the Corvid Wars. Now they were struggling to deal with all that had happened to them and what their purpose was in a world that didn’t seem to need them anymore.

It was Steven’s turn to write the eighth chapter -- it had been for a while -- and he had to admit that he was stuck. He and Connie had tossed around ideas for the seventh chapter when they had met up in Lone Star City, and she had penned quite the tale stemming from that conversation. Steven had devoured the chapter while floating down St. Anthony’s River in central Second Aquamexico on a boat tour.

The seventh chapter was haunting and deep and sad in a way that felt good to read somehow. He’d thought about it -- and how he could possibly follow it -- while he’d spent a week at a ranch outside Okie City in Panhandle. He’d thought about how Magpie Jones’s story would look on the big screen or the small screen while he’d toured the production studios of Kansas City, Kansas. He’d stood under the Big Expensive Arch in Louis, Misery, and had thought about the chapter he should be writing. He’d splashed around the hot springs in Second Kansas and had forgotten about it for a while, and then he’d gone back to his hotel room in Small Rock and had opened his laptop and stared at the Boogle Doc on the screen, just as he was doing now.

His phone alarm beeped at him. Steven checked it, surprised; he hadn’t realized how long he’d been watching his cursor blink. It was nearly time for him to meet up with the Pigeon Brigade.

The Pigeon Brigade were a group he’d scored an invitation to join via an online meetup site. They marched together every year in the Chubby Monday Parade, and they always dressed up as pigeons or pigeon-adjacent concepts. They welcomed newcomers and Steven had been charmed by the name, so he’d asked to march with them and they’d accepted, provided he wore pigeon-relevant attire, or at least attire that could be potentially justified as pigeon-relevant.

It was unnaturally hot here in Nola, Bayou Teche; it was only March and Steven couldn’t bear to wear his jacket outside. The humidity made it even worse. Delmarva in summer had been wet and gross, but Bayou Teche was downright tropical even in winter. As such, Steven wasn’t planning to wear a whole pigeon costume, as much as the idea tickled him. Instead he had settled for drawing a crude-looking pigeon in permanent marker on a baseball cap he’d bought at the store and hoping the rest of the Pigeon Brigade wouldn’t think him lazy for it.

When he arrived at the meetup spot, he was greeted enthusiastically by the members of the Brigade, including one brave soul decked out in a full pigeon bodysuit, who introduced herself as Pigeon Brigadier General Alison.

“Steven Universe,” said Steven Universe in response.

“Steven Universe!” exclaimed General Alison. “That’s such a cool name!”

Steven smiled, a little hesitantly. He got this reaction sometimes and he’d never understood it. Even Connie had confided in him that she wished she could have a cool last name like “Universe”. Steven hadn’t known how to explain to her that he came from a town where names had meaning, that he came from a whole alien species where names had meaning, and he hated that his own name had no meaning at all. Just a word from a song. Isolated, without connection, meaningless. He’d felt adrift his whole life, one step removed from his own history, his own family, always searching for some way to ground himself in a real past. He took names where he could find them: DeMayo, Diamond, he’d tried to take Maheswaran too. Anything for a history, anything to make him feel less alone.

“I think your name’s cool too,” he said diplomatically.

General Alison beamed. “Thanks!” she said. “Here, have some beads.” She draped an unexpectedly large amount of bead necklaces around Steven’s neck, in various shades of purple, gold, and green.

“Wow,” said Steven, examining the beads. “What’re they for?”

“They’re a Chubby Monday tradition!” said General Alison. “You carry around extra so you can throw them at people if you like.”

“Oh,” said Steven, slightly concerned but not wanting to show it and possibly disrespect local Chubby Monday traditions. “Um, good?”

“Great!” General Alison corrected him. “Now let’s get going!”

And so they joined the parade. One of the Pigeon Brigade’s lesser officers, possibly a Pigeon Major or somesuch (Steven wasn’t entirely clear how military ranks worked), held the official Pigeon Brigade flag aloft as they marched or, more accurately, ambled along with the rest of the Chubby Monday celebrators. The press of bodies didn’t help with the heat, but the energetic atmosphere did liven Steven’s mood, and there was at least a small breeze that fluffed up his hair and made the cypress trees lining the streets sway just a little bit, as if dancing to a very slow tune.

The members of the Pigeon Brigade did indeed throw their bead necklaces at people, although it seemed to Steven that their targets quite enjoyed having things thrown at them, so maybe it wasn’t such a bad tradition after all. Still, he couldn’t quite bring himself to throw anything, despite General Alison’s many entreaties to do so. Instead he settled for passing out beads to other parade-goers who had run out. They usually thanked him graciously and then proceeded to throw the beads themselves.

Partway through the parade, a portal opened up next to Steven. Lion roared his way out and nearly knocked Steven flat on his back.

“Lion!” said Steven. “You’re here early. I’m not seeing Lars until tomorrow.” It occurred to him as he said this that this was a minor tragedy, given how much the Off-Colors would no doubt love Chubby Monday, which seemed like an entire parade dedicated to being as off-color as possible. “Is something wrong?”

Lion yawned at him. Steven took that as a no.

“Okay, good,” said Steven. He grinned at Lion. “Did you just want to come to Chubby Monday? Is that why you’re here?”

Lion looked away, his expression carefully aloof. Steven took that as a yes.

“Aw, that’s great!” said Steven. “C’mon, you’ll love it.” He gestured for Lion to join the Pigeon Brigade, who were all looking at him with varying shades of disbelief.

Eventually General Alison found her voice. “Uh, Steven?” she said. “Is that your magic pink lion?”

“He’s his own lion,” said Steven. “But he loves me! Don’t you, Lion?” He took Lion’s face in his hands and looked deeply into his eyes. Lion stared back emptily. “The blank stare means yes,” Steven stage-whispered to General Alison.

“He’s a lion and his name is Lion?” said the Pigeon Brigade officer of indeterminate rank who was subordinate to General Alison but still important enough to carry the flag.

“Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it?” said Steven, and the officer couldn’t argue with that.

“That’s so cool that you have a lion!” General Alison exclaimed.

“A magic pink lion!” added another Pigeon Brigade member, who Steven was pretty sure went by Cinnamon Sam, for reasons totally unknown to him. “Even cooler!”

“Thank you,” said Steven. “I agree. Lion _is_ cool.”

“ _You’re_ cool, Steven Universe,” said General Alison. The other members of the Pigeon Brigade echoed their agreement with this sentiment.

Steven considered this. “I guess I am,” he said. “But you guys are pretty cool too. I mean, you guys dress up like pigeons every single year! I’ve only done it this once, and all I have is this hat.”

“That’s true,” said the flag-bearer. “We are also very cool.”

“But not as cool as Steven Universe,” argued Cinnamon Sam. “I bet Steven could get voted Sovereign Ruler of the Parade!”

“Oh yeah!” said General Alison. “You totally could! You should nominate yourself, Steven.”

“Sovereign Ruler of the Parade?” said Steven, confused.

“Every year, the parade elects a Sovereign Ruler, based on who we think best represents the uninhibited spirit of Chubby Monday,” Cinnamon Sam explained.

“And with a name and a hat and a lion like yours,” said General Alison, “you could totally win!”

“You probably could,” conceded the flag-bearer, who did not seem quite as enthused about this idea as everyone else did.

Steven adjusted his hat as he walked. “What does this Sovereign Ruler do, exactly?”

General Alison shrugged. “Not much,” she said. “You just kind of stand there and get crowned and then maybe throw some beads at people, if you want.”

“Oh,” said Steven. “Huh.” He squinted up at the sky, running a hand up and down his arm uncomfortably. “I think I’ll pass,” he said at last. “I’ve had enough of people trying to crown me sovereign ruler of things.”

“That happens to you a lot?” said the flag-bearer, bewildered.

“Well, once,” said Steven, “but that was enough.”

“Aw, c’mon,” said Cinnamon Sam, “you should totally do it! All you gotta do is line up with the other nominees when the guy blows the Election Trombone.”

“And then when they ask you why you should be elected Sovereign Ruler of the Parade, you tell them you’re Steven Universe from the Pigeon Brigade and you show off your magic pink lion friend and then you also maybe do a cool pose,” said General Alison. “And then we vote for you! It’ll be fun!”

“I don’t think so,” said Steven. “Thanks, though.”

Cinnamon Sam clapped him on the shoulder. “C’mon, Steven! Do it for the Pigeon Brigade.”

For a moment Steven almost acquiesced. But then he thought about sitting in that pink throne in the palace on Homeworld, that throne that was so much smaller than the ones around it yet so much bigger than he was, that throne that gave him as much power as it took away. “No,” he said firmly, looking Cinnamon Sam in the eye, and then turning to the rest of the Pigeon Brigade. “I’m not going to nominate myself. I appreciate that you think I’m cool enough to win and maybe I am, but I don’t want to and I’m not going to do it.” And he kept walking. Lion followed, sniffing the air disdainfully as he did so.

Maybe a minute later General Alison jogged up to join him. “Hey, Steven,” she said. “Sorry about that. We didn’t mean to pressure you, we just got excited.”

“I know,” said Steven. “It’s okay.” He stroked Lion, who was eyeing General Alison suspiciously, or possibly just trying to figure out if she were truly a human or a pigeon.

“It’s really cool that you stood up for yourself like that, though,” said General Alison.

Steven frowned, confused. “I did?”

“Yeah,” said General Alison, confused by Steven’s own confusion. “We were pushing you and you got stressed out, so you drew a really clear boundary. When I was your age, no way would I have been able to do something like that! I was such a people-pleaser back then.” She laughed.

Steven replayed the conversation in his mind. “You’re right,” he said in wonderment. “I did do that, didn’t I? And I didn’t even think about it while I was doing it.” A smile started to spread across his face.

General Alison gave him a knowing look. “You too, huh?” she said. She tapped his hat playfully. “Well, don’t worry, Steven Universe. You’re doing great. I’m happy to report you’ve pleased exactly none of us.”

She went for a high-five, and Steven met her hand with his own. General Alison took high-fiving as seriously as she took pigeons, so his hand stung when he withdrew it, but in the good kind of way, and he smiled as he shook it out.

“Now,” said General Alison, gesturing at the rest of the Pigeon Brigade, who were still hanging back a little, “whaddya say we go grab a couple po’ boys? I think the rest of our flock are getting hungry.”

“Sounds good,” said Steven, and beside him, Lion gave a quiet roar of approval.

When Steven got back to his hotel room that night, a partied-out Lion in tow, he almost opened up his laptop to the Magpie Jones Boogle Doc again. But instead, he took out his phone and texted Connie: _Hey Connie. I need to take a break from Magpie Jones for a bit._

A couple seconds later, Connie texted back: _Sure! Let me know if anything changes._

Steven smiled. He really was getting better at this. Beside him, Lion curled up on his pillow, as was his wont. Steven took off the three bead necklaces he still had on and stored them in Lion’s mane so he’d remember to take them to the Off-Colors tomorrow. Then he leaned back against his (admittedly extremely cool) magic pink lion, and went to sleep at last.


	10. The Jersey Turnpike

There was no place in the world quite like the Jersey Turnpike, especially if you wanted to get into a traffic jam. Steven hadn’t wanted to do so today, and yet it had happened to him anyway. Life could be funny like that.

He’d left Delmarva on the I-95 earlier this afternoon and now he was officially up north again, just in time for the warm weather to start rolling in. After shedding his pigeon feathers back in Bayou Teche, he’d gone on to River City in Jackson, where he’d absorbed more blues music than he’d ever heard before in his life. Then he’d studied up on history in Yellowhammer City, Dixie; nearly gotten eaten by friendly but overly enthusiastic alligators in Alligator City, the aptly-named capital of Florida Island; visited the headquarters of Cuca-Cola (“the world’s first cucumber soda!”) in Atlantis, George; gone birdwatching at Turtle Beach outside Palmetto City in southern New Dominion; driven along scenic mountain highways in Old Dominion before checking out the famous gold-domed Charles City capitol building; and finally made his triumphant return to Delmarva just last night.

He’d driven over to Beach City in the morning to visit for a few hours, but had set a deadline for heading out so that he didn’t accidentally get caught up in fixing everyone’s problems and end up delaying his journey north.

He’d stopped by Little Homeworld first and played Go Fishin’ with Bismuth, Lapis, and Peridot, all of whom were much more excited about playing Go Fishin’ than anyone Steven had ever met except for maybe himself. Lapis had stitched him a welcome mat for his new apartment that said “Welcome :)” and had a picture of a rather terrifying gourd guard dog on it that was nevertheless cute enough to make Steven cry. Peridot had given him a Camp Pining Hearts reboot calendar with poor Rodrigo’s face crossed out when he showed up in December. “Trust me, it’s an improvement,” she’d said. Steven wasn’t sure he did trust her on matters of Rodrigo, but he had smiled and hugged her anyway. Bismuth had made him a keyring with a keychain in the shape of her star logo, and had promised he could come back anytime and ask for an addition to the keychain.

Then Steven had gone to the Big Donut and gotten some donuts for the road, where he’d run into Ronaldo, who thanked him profusely for getting him in touch with Cheesy Joe and asked him if he knew anything about the Mystery of the Broken Baseball Curse!!! that was currently plaguing the Keep Second England Weird message boards. Steven had nervously suggested that snake people might be responsible, to which Ronaldo only shook his head sadly, as might a wizened professor when condescending to a naive student. “Oh, Steven,” he’d said, with a note of pity in his voice, “sneople aren’t real.”

Next he’d dropped by the beach house to visit his dad and the Gems. They’d played a video game together and then had a little jam session, and then he was off to Fish Stew Pizza.

The most difficult thing about getting an apartment had been the question of credit. Steven had none. His dad had some; it wasn’t exactly stellar. Steven and his dad had both spent many a phone conversation in recent weeks trying to convince various rental agencies that money was really not an issue for them. But the rental agencies weren’t just concerned with money, they wanted credibility. Eventually Steven had reached out to the other residents of Beach City for help, and he’d manage to convince a rental agency in Jersey to let him sign a lease, with his dad co-signing, so long as Nanefua Pizza vouched for him in her official capacity as an elected government official. The rental agency had only required a formal statement of endorsement with her signature on it, but Nanefua had decided she was going to accompany Steven on his visit to the agency in person, just in case.

At Fish Stew Pizza, Jenny had managed to talk Steven into buying a Phone Jacket, which this week only came with a free Phone Poncho as well (“for those rainy Jersey days!”). Kiki had just rolled her eyes and boxed up Steven’s every-topping-imaginable pizza to go. Then Nanefua had come out of the kitchen brandishing a still-flopping fish and proclaiming she was ready to head out.

“Um, what’s the fish for?” Steven had asked.

“So if they don’t listen, I can hit them with it!” she had replied triumphantly, making a thwacking gesture with the fish at an imaginary opponent’s head, and Steven had known better than to argue.

And that was why, two hours later, Steven and a small-town mayor were stuck in traffic on the Jersey Turnpike in a car that smelled of fish.

He hadn’t expected to end up in Jersey. (Inasmuch as you could ‘end up’ anywhere when you weren’t even eighteen yet.) Once upon a time he might have even considered himself too good for the place, even if he would never have vocalized the thought. But while he’d enjoyed his trek across the country, he hadn’t really found what he’d been hoping to find: a state that just screamed “Steven’s new home”. Maybe that hadn’t been a fair expectation for him to have, but part of him had had it nonetheless, even if theoretically he was well aware that home was what you made of it. But he hadn’t found it, hadn’t arrived at that perfect destination, and he was trying to be okay with that because, well, pork chops and hot dogs and all that.

What the road trip had taught him was that the rest of the country was in certain ways surprisingly different from where he’d grown up. (In other ways, of course, it was exactly the same.) And while he did need something a little different if he were going to keep making progress, he wasn’t so sure about leaving the East Coast, not right now anyway. In the rest of the country he’d often felt too warm or too strange or too exposed. If there were one place in the world that wouldn’t look twice at a traumatized half-alien boy who sometimes became a giant pink Godzilla monster and who sometimes took over other people’s bodies without asking and who sometimes just flat-out killed people, it was Jersey.

“So Steven,” Nanefua broke the silence, “what are you going to do for a job?”

Steven considered this as the traffic inched forward. “I don’t know exactly,” he said. “Not customer service. Not tire repair.” Left Rear Tire Steven may not have been a disaster, but he knew better than to put himself in a position where he could potentially create an entire civilization of sapient rubber Stevens. That road led only to becoming another White Diamond, and Steven felt the two of them had quite enough in common already, thank you very much. Which reminded him: “Nothing that’s all about fixing things, or helping people.”

Nanefua thought for a moment. “Ah. So you want to become a billionaire,” she said.

Steven sputtered. “No! I didn’t mean it like that,” he said. “I’m not saying I never want to ever help anyone again. Just, that can’t be my entire life.”

“Hm,” said Nanefua, tapping the now-dead fish on her lap thoughtfully. “A millionaire, then.”

“I think I technically already am one,” said Steven. “And that’s not what I meant either. I think what I really want, most of all, is a job that’s nothing like who I am, or who I was. A job where I’m not in charge of other people. A job where I’m not trying to do everything by myself. A job where I feel like I can say no.”

Nanefua laughed. “In this economy? Good luck,” she said, and Steven felt slightly abashed, because maybe somewhere there was a kid who was going through the same things he was going through (well, okay, maybe not the exact same things, but generally similar issues), only that kid’s dad wasn’t a multi-millionaire and so they couldn’t go on a soul-searching road trip when they were seventeen and instead they had to get a customer service job that only exacerbated their issues, while he was free to turn down any job that threatened to turn him into Godzilla again, or even any job that he just plain didn’t like.

But he remembered something his therapist had told him: if he could afford to preserve his mental health, he should. Even if he knew that there were other people who couldn’t, even if he knew he had certain advantages that made it easier for him, even if he knew it wasn’t fair. If you could get better, you should. Because getting better at least helped one person, you, and maybe even the people around you too, whereas not getting better helped no one at all.

“I haven’t thought it all through yet,” Steven admitted. “But I’ve got time.” A thought occurred to him. “What made you decide to run for mayor, Nanefua?”

Nanefua shrugged. “Someone had to do something,” she said. “Mr. Billiam Dewey was letting us down. He was too much like you, I think. Sorry, Steven,” she added hastily. “But it’s the truth.”

He waved off her apology. “No, that’s fair,” he said. “But what made you decide it had to be you?”

Nanefua stroked the fish on her lap thoughtfully, like a Jimmy Bund villain petting their prized villain cat. “Well,” she said, “I was always good at organizing. I had to be. Kofi, he was such a mess when he was your age. Never even cleaned his room. Someone had to whip him into shape.” She thumped the fish to make her point. “But, not literally of course. I would not actually hit my son with a fish.”

“Of course,” said Steven, who truly had no idea what ‘normal’ parenting looked like and had been prepared to accept that maybe hitting children with fish was par for the course.

“And,” said Nanefua, “to be honest, I was getting sick of being in the restaurant all day. It smelled of fish. They are very stinky, you know.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed,” said Steven, who definitely had. 

“So, I ran for mayor,” Nanefua concluded her tale. “And then I won! Even though you campaigned against me.”

“Oh, uh, right,” said Steven. “Sorry about that.”

Nanefua patted his arm. “Everyone is wrong sometimes,” she said. “Even me.” She paused. “Do not tell Kofi I said that.”

Steven laughed. “I won’t,” he said. “I promise.”

After some time the cars started to move forward again. Eventually the Dondai got past the source of the blockage in traffic, which was an overturned truck that looked as if it had been on fire sometime in the past few hours. Steven wished he could stop and help. He kept driving instead.

Eventually they reached their exit and finally left the Jersey Turnpike, which was an impressive feat in and of itself. Steven had started to suspect that the Jersey Turnpike was some sort of supernatural vortex that sucked in unwitting victims and never let them go. But, as it turned out, it was just a road. Like how he himself was just a person in the end, not a monster or an angel after all.

They drove through Trent-Towne, past hospitals and museums and the big bridge in the middle of the city that proudly, or maybe bitterly, proclaimed: “Trent-Towne Makes, The World Takes!!!” Steven smiled when he saw it, because it was good to know he had company.

At last they pulled up to the rental agency, which was in a quiet part of town. The trees hung over the sidewalk like sentries, and the sun glowed orange in the blue-ish Jersey sky.

Steven got out of the car and leaned against it, taking in the sight of the building with his hands stuffed deep in the pockets of his letterman jacket. Nanefua followed, the unfortunate fish dangling limply from one hand. She shook it a little, for a purpose entirely unknown to Steven, or perhaps just for effect.

“Well, Steven?” she said. “Are you ready to go in?”

Steven took a deep breath in, and then let it all out.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m ready.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that’s a wrap! If you have the time, I’d love to know what your favorite chapter was. I also take questions and constructive critique. I will try to reply to comments this time since it is the last chapter. :)


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